Top 183 Quotes & Sayings by Jack Ma

As a business person, I want the world to share the prosperity together.

I don't think I'm a workaholic. Every weekend, I invite my colleagues and friends to my home to play cards. And people, my neighbors, are always surprised because I live on the second floor apartment, and there are usually 40 pairs of shoes in front of my gate, and people play cards inside and play chess. We have a lot of fun.

My job is making money, helping other people make money. I am spending money, trying to make sure more people get rich, because you cannot spend a lot of money, right? So my job is spending money, helping others. This is a headache.

I don't want people in China to have deep pockets but shallow minds.

I like to play cards. I'm not very good, because I don't want to calculate, I just play by instinct. But I've learned a lot of business philosophy by playing poker.

I call Alibaba '1,001 mistakes.' We expanded too fast, and then in the dot-com bubble, we had to have layoffs. By 2002, we had only enough cash to survive for 18 months. We had a lot of free members using our site, and we didn't know how we'd make money. So we developed a product for China exporters to meet U.S. buyers online. This model saved us.

As a company, we have to be very transparent. We are in a business very related to finance, and I want this company to last long, and I want this company to be audited by everyone.

If we work so hard and put all the money in the hospital to buy medicine - it will be a disaster. Why we should work? So without a healthy environment of this Earth, no matter how much money you make, no matter how wonderful you are, you have a bad disaster.

Our philosophy is, using internet technology, we can make every company become Amazon.

When I was 12 years old, I went to swim in a lake, and I almost died in that lake because the water was too deep - much deeper than I thought.

The most important thing is to make the technology inclusive - make the world change. Next, pay attention to those people who are 30 years old, because those are the internet generation. They will change the world; they are the builders of the world.

The world needs new leadership, but the new leadership is about working together.

It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys. It's your strategy. Distribute the money and things in a proper way.

People think, 'Jack, you do too much.'

I am going to enjoy some other things apart from business.

The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you've got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don't give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.

Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived Australia, I thought, 'Oh my God, everything is different from what I was told.' Since then, I started to think differently.

If the 'Post' can play the role of a connector between the West and the East, I have confidence in the paper's future success.

I think globalization is a great thing. And now a lot of people complain about globalization; a lot of people don't like, you know, the globalize of the concept, the idea of the results. I think the globalization is a great idea and to create a lot of jobs.

I'm not a tech guy. I'm looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people's eyes.

When we started the e-commerce, nobody believed that China would have e-commerce because people believed in 'guang-shi,' face-to-face, and all kinds of network in traditional ways. There's no trust system in China.

If you want to invest in us, we believe customer number one, employee number two, shareholder number three. If they don't want to buy that, that's fine. If they regret, they can sell us.

I don't want to be liked. I want to be respected.

The very important thing you should have is patience.

Help young people. Help small guys. Because small guys will be big. Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds, and when they grow up, they will change the world.

You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.

If you're doing business, not that simple to only buy. You have to create something. You have to create something that never exist for the future.

My vision is to build an e-commerce ecosystem that allows consumers and businesses to do all aspects of business online.

A trade war would be a disaster for the world. It's very easy to slip into a trade war.

EBay is a great company. There are a lot of good assets and good customers, and the U.S. people love it.

I know nothing about technology.

I'm a normal guy.

China's government is so strong on investment, so strong on exporting, but they're too weak on domestic consumption.

Today the financial market is no good, but the money is there.

The world is getting so small. Young people are mobile; they want to travel around the world. When you travel around the world, you exchange culture, you want to make friends, you want to exchange things.

On privacy issues, it's just like hundreds of years ago when people said, 'I would rather put my money under my pillow than in a bank.' But today, banks know how to protect money much better than you do. Today, we may not have the answers to privacy issues, but I believe our young people will come up with the solutions.

I want to change history, do something important in my life, and influence individuals like we have with millions of small businesses on Alibaba. Then they love and respect you because you made their life important.

Every government says they love small businesses, but what have they done for them? We should pull down all the barriers.

Every technological revolution takes about 50 years.

The difference between Amazon and us is Amazon is more like an empire - everything they control themselves, buy and sell.

You American people worry too much about the China economy. Every time you think China is a problem, we get better, but when you have a high expectation for China, China is always a problem.

Alibaba spends money on improving the products and services, not on kickbacks. That's a good thing. It's called a value system, and because of that, we get more and more small- to medium-sized companies to support us in China.

In the beginning I just wanted to survive. For the first three years, we made zero revenue. I remember many times when I was trying to pay up, the restaurant owner would say, 'Your bill was paid.' And there would be a note saying, 'Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.'

When I am myself, I am happy and have a good result.

Spending money is much more difficult than making money.

We should keep on going along the path of globalization. Globalization is good... when trade stops, war comes.

A startup for entrepreneurs is like a baby, and I have five babies so far - experienced father.

I try to make myself happy, no, because I know that if I'm not happy, my colleagues are not happy and my shareholders are not happy and my customers are not happy.

What kind of business world are we living in?

There are big problems that change the world. If we are working together, that will make us understand each other, appreciate each other, help each other.

I'm just a purist. What is important in my life is that I can do something that can influence many people and influence China's development. When I am myself, I am relaxed and happy and have a good result.

Trade is a communication of cultures and values.

My job is to help more people have jobs.

I'm coming to this world not to work. I want to come to this world to enjoy my life. I don't want to die in my office. I want to die on the beaches.

A peace talk is always difficult, always complicated.

Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.

Trust the young people; trust this generation's innovation. They're making things, changing innovation every day. And all the consumers are the same: they want new things, they want cheap things, they want good things, they want unique things. If we can create these kind of things for consumers, they will come.

I'm humble 'cause I think many years ago people say, 'Well, Alibaba's terrible company'. And I know we were not that terrible. We're pretty good; we're better than people thought. But today, when people have a high expectation on you, and I start to worry and nervous because we are not good yet.

There's an examination for young people to go to university. I failed it three times. I failed a lot. So I applied to 30 different jobs and got rejected. I went for a job with the police; they said, 'You're no good.' I even went to KFC when it came to my city. Twenty-four people went for the job. Twenty-three were accepted.

I believe always you should have a philanthropic heart inside but business way. Because you have to get things done. That is what scientists tell us how to do properly. Business should tell us how to get things done efficiently. And government should have the good environment and the foundations of researching.