We have built a very good company, and we're proud of it. We also recognize that much of it has been built on the shoulders of the thousands of employees and leaders who have worked here before us.
I built a net worth of more than $10 billion. I have a great, great company. I employ thousands of people. And I'm very proud of the job I did.
The problem right now, which I've been pointing out very bluntly to American officials in Washington, is that the U.S. has no economic presence in Afghanistan. The Afghans can't point and say, "Oh, the Americans built that road. They built that telecommunications facility. They built that electricity powerhouse," because nothing has been built so far.
I'm proud we have built a billion-dollar business from scratch here in the US. It has been done very much in a slow, building way. It wasn't an instant type of thing. America is a huge market where persistence is very important, and I am a builder by nature.
Is every moment of our lives built into us before we're born? If it is, does it make us less responsible for the things we do, or is the responsibility built in too?
I built a phenomenal company; if we could run America the way I ran my company, we'd be proud of it.
We have built a company with a business mix and operating system that will allow us to deliver record results in any foreseeable economic climate, ... We have just completed a very successful management transition and I've never been more confident about the company's future.
My base understands the Mexican wall is going to get built, whether I have it funded here or if I get it funded later, that wall's getting built, OK? One hundred percent. One hundred percent it's getting built. And it's also getting built for much less money - I hope you get this - than some people are estimating.
I think I have made a lot of sacrifices. I've work very, very hard. I've created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I've done - I've had tremendous success.
When I came in, the city was on the edge of bankruptcy. I'm proud of what I did. I built the foundation that mayors after me built upon - particularly Bloomberg. But the foundation was essential because if it hadn't occurred, we would have been another Detroit.
The great houses of Britain have, for centuries, been the guardians of much of our history, not just of the families who built and lived in them, but of the people who worked there, of the local area, of all of us.
So much of Reddit as a product was built on the shoulders of giants... We did some novel remixes of it but, at the end of the day, it was that: Grit and good luck.
I'd worked in music for years and built all these relationships, so I bought a camera, built a website, and decided to go for it.
I built a company at the same time I built a career.
In an ironic twist, I now see Good to Great not as a sequel to Built to Last, but more of a prequel. Good to Great is about how to turn a good organization into one that produces sustained great results. Built to Last is about how you take a company with great results and turn it into an enduring great company of iconic stature.
We're talking about America - a country that's been built on the back of cheap labor. That's addicted to cheap labor. Talk to the Chinese and Irish who built the railroads. Talk to the black people who built the South. So what is the US-Mexico conversation really about?
Illinois had the first aquarium built in Chicago. The very first skyscraper in the entire world was built in Chicago in 1885. The tallest building in North America, formerly the Sears Tower, now Willis Tower, is in Chicago. Evanston, home to Northwestern, is also home to the ice cream sundae. Illinois has a lot to be proud of.