Top 114 Quotes & Sayings by Kevin O'Leary - Page 2

Once in a while, I see my fellow TV investors praise a business just because they like the entrepreneur behind it. That kind of thinking might make you feel warm and fuzzy inside - but let's get back to reality.

A lot of people have said a lot of great things about Steve Jobs. And for good reason: he built the world's second-most valuable company, with billions in profits and products that have improved every aspect of our lives. But Steve didn't get there by being a soft, fluffy, Kumbaya-type leader.

Many blue-collar families struggling to pay rent would be happy to skip paying optional union dues.

All businesses require capital, management and labor, and business executives, wanting to grow and maintain profitable enterprises, have a strong incentive to keep costs, including labor, as low as possible.

Building fast-growing, globally competitive companies is tough.

Protecting Americans from harm goes beyond police and national defense. It's imperative that we not destroy the commons, the physical environment on which we rely.

We have to change public perception of ex-convicts. Most Canadians don't realize that when you come out of prison, you're a complete pariah. You can't get a car loan or money from a bank to start a business. So most end up back in prison within 24 months. It's just so wrong. We need to fix this problem.

There are a lot of idiot fund managers out there who add no value to the process at all.

I keep anywhere between 5-10 percent of my net worth in venture ideas.

I look at Twitter as brand building.

Know everything about the companies and people you are going to be negotiating with. Insist on getting the names of everyone participating in the negotiations. Leave no stone unturned; find out as much as you can.

Imagine how foolish you'd look if, like one clever salesman who once pitched to me, you tried to license your product to a big industry player without knowing they just launched a competing product. With the right background research, he could have avoided that and other landmines - and so can you.

Once Michigan stood proud. In addition to GM, Ford and Chrysler, it was home base for the United Auto Workers, a powerful escalator transporting hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers into America's middle class.

Trudeau motivated people between the ages of 18 to 35 to vote, and 82 per cent of them voted for him. That changed Canadian politics forever. If they stay motivated, and believe me, they are, no party can ever get a majority mandate again without winning at least 60 per cent of those voters. There hasn't been a Conservative candidate in 15 years that ever got on a campus anywhere here in any Canadian university and wasn't thrown stones at.

People say that I can't speak French. C'est pas vraiment placé. I'm getting better every day. I just have to keep practising. That's the truth.

The road to riches is never straight and narrow. It can be riddled with financial land mines.

Let's not forget, there are three languages in Canada - English, French, and there's the language of jobs.

I see negotiations as an honest attempt to reach a deal that's great for everyone at the table. But sometimes, for whatever reason, that's impossible. You need to accept that possibility-don't make a deal for the sake of making a deal. If you do, chances are it will fall apart later anyway, with costs and headaches for everyone involved. And once you walk away, don't come back.

Don’t let the dark clouds of greed confuse you

I'm ashamed of what has happened to Canada. And I'm not leaving a $1.5 trillion deficit to my kids. No chance in hell is that happening.

I'm alarmed at what's happening in Canada. I'm vested here.

I actually think being an entrepreneur is a state of mind. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, my thesis is that you have to sacrifice everything for some period in your life to be successful. You have to be myopic and completely focused and unbalanced in every way. Once you've achieved success, you're free to do whatever you like.

Vision is nothing without a plan to execute it.

Downturns are the best time to start businesses because you develop discipline that's very lean and mean in terms of how to spend money. And those habits serve you very well in good times.

Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas

Imagine bringing Canada into a trillion-and-a-half of deficit. That's insane.

I'm not going to leave Canada, I'm going to fix it.

What are the most important qualities that make a successful entrepreneur? The ability to communicate. The ability to express your idea with certainty. That's how you become a leader-even if you are unsure, your ability to explain your vision and your direction is the attribute you need the most. ... Articulate your idea in 90 seconds or less.

I don't think spending time in Ottawa is a good use of my time as the leader.

When I start something I bring my A-game - I assume I'm going to win.

I never, ever, ever let emotion get in the way of an investment.

What I'm trying to do is immerse myself.

The biggest mistake entrepreneurs can make is trying to do everything themselves. They usually blow up when they try. I did an inventory of every deal I've ever done and it turned out that every single deal I made money on was a partnership, and every colossal failure, where I lost millions, was something I tried to do by myself.

The skies were blue when I was coming up. I want my kids to have the same opportunity, if not better, than I had.

Trump has been very, very open and clear on what he's going to do. He's going to make the U.S. very competitive on taxes, corporate and personal. He's eliminating policy on carbon and the regulatory environment on shale and energy and pipeline development. These are all things that Canada has to do and we no longer have a competitive environment to do them in. It manifests itself in the slow grind of our economy.

My partners... taught me that in order to create wealth, I needed to pair up with people whose strengths compensated for my weaknesses.

The definition of leadership is that you have to find great people and ask them to do extraordinary things. I've been doing that my whole life.

If I don't deliver a majority mandate in 2019, fire me.

Canada has always been ready for the truth. I think they actually appreciate a politician or anybody as a leader who tells the truth.

Basically, if you're a young Canadian now and Trudeau puts this country into $1.5 trillion in debt, you will never have the opportunity that I had as a young Canadian.

I want to spend my time at colleges and universities.

(On soft launches) It allows you to test your assumptions and see which ones you got right, and more, importantly, which ones you got wrong. A big hard launch is expensive. Getting even one thing wrong can force you to go out of business.

Justin Trudeau is going to elect Kevin O'Leary. All he has to do is keep doing what he is doing.

When I turned 50, something clicked in my head and I said, 'I'm not going to live to 100. I'm half-cooked already.' I set the family down and I said, 'Listen everybody, we're now entering the decade of Daddy. We're going to start doing things that I want to do.

You either make it illegal, in which case you support a huge underground economy or you tax it within the limits people can afford.

I have great people working for me now. I surround myself with smart people.

If you put Canada into $1.5 trillion in debt and interest rates go up just 200 basis points, you cannot provide the services to 36 million people that were guaranteed to them in the social contract they have with Canada. That's a very, very scary prospect. You can't burden this economy with that much debt. The risk you take on is insurmountable. You have to assume for the next 50 years that rates don't go up? That's insane. That's irresponsible. That's stupid.

I have no baggage in politics. I've never been a politician. I don't owe anybody anything.

Do you want to be rich or not? Let's get focused on that, buddy

Life is hard, money doesn't care, your tears don’t add value

You can't win a majority mandate unless you get back 60 per cent of the votes between the ages of 18 and 35. It's a fact.

I'm not planning on giving my kids any of my wealth. They know when their education is over, I'm pushing them out of the nest. The bird you see dead under the nest is the one who didn't think about the future.

We need physical exercise to prepare our brain for long periods of concentration

You'd rather own gold; not the miner