Businesspeople From The United States

"One can make the argument that the success of the Shepard flight enabled the decision to go to the moon."

"His flight was a tremendous statement about tenacity, courage and brilliance. He crawled on top of that rocket that had never before flown into space with a person aboard, and he did it. That was an unbelievable act of courage."

"His service will always loom large in America's history. He is one of the great heroes of modern America."

"With the passing of Alan Shepard, our nation has lost an outstanding patriot, one of its finest pilots -and I have lost a very close friend."

"Now that we've lost Alan Shepard, I can't help feeling that something is wrong with this picture; astronauts aren't supposed to grow old and leave this Earth forever. In our memories, they remain as Shepard was on that sunny Friday morning in May 1961, when he lay inside a tiny Mercury capsule ready to be hurled into space atop a Redstone booster."

"The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder."

"We're going to see passengers in space stations in 15 years, who will be able to buy a ticket and spend a weekend in space."

"We had some adverse conditions in the '60s, in the '70s and the '80s. The agency has risen above that in the past and will rise above that again."

"The same way people are now paying a couple thousand dollars to fly to other parts of the world, people will be paying $50,000 to spend a weekend on a space station."

"This is the first time that astronauts of the first group have exhibited things that are personal and sentimental to them. We hope it will encourage youngsters to follow in our footsteps."

"I just wanted to be the first one to fly for America, not because I'd end up in the pages of history books."

"No way that any astronaut worth his salt volunteered for the space program to become a hero. You don't select astronauts who want fame and fortune. You select them because they're the best test pilots in the world, they know it, and it's a personal challenge for them. And the astronauts of today are exactly the same."

"If we had said 30 years ago that we were going to have only two incidents with casualties, we would have thought, 'Boy, that's great. To me, that indicates that the program has really exceeded what the early expectations were."

"I can hit it farther on the moon. But actually, my swing is better here on Earth."

"I think about the personal accomplishment, but there's more of a sense of the grand achievement by all the people who could put this man on the moon."

"The first one I hit pretty flush with one hand - went about 200 yards. And the second one I shanked, and it rolled into a crater about 40 yards away."

"We need a continuing presence in space."

"I guess those of us who have been with NASA … kind of understand the tremendous excitement and thrills and celebrations and national pride that went with the Apollo program is just something you're not going to create again, probably until we go to Mars."

"I realized up there that our planet is not infinite. It's fragile. That may not be obvious to a lot of folks, and it's tough that people are fighting each other here on Earth instead of trying to get together and live on this planet. We look pretty vulnerable in the darkness of space."

"There were similarities between these two incidents. The similarity was too much success … over-confidence and complacency, quite frankly."

"I know you're all saying I can go to the moon but I can't find Pasadena."

"There's no question that all the generations got excited about the first flights, with Kennedy's inspiration to go to the moon, leaving the planet for the first time, and fortunately coming back."

"He combined the analytic approach of a scientist with an ability to engage others in honest and deep conversation, which sustained Intel's success over a period that saw the rise of the personal computer, the internet and Silicon Valley."

"Andy Grove... escaped the ruins of postwar Europe to become one of the architects of Silicon Valley’s growth into the world’s center of technology creation."

"The personal computer... went to individuals first before it went to corporations... The corporations are sitting, wishing this whole friggin' thing [Electric cars] to go away. Which is exactly what the computer companies' attitude was to personal computers."

"The drumbeat of the electrical transportation is accelerating like nothing I've ever seen in my life."

"And try not to get too depressed in the part of the journey, because there’s a professional responsibility. If you are depressed, you can’t motivate your staff to extraordinary measures. So you have to keep your own spirits up even though you well understand that you don’t know what you’re doing."

"I think it is very important for you to do two things: act on your temporary conviction as if it was a real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course very quickly"

"By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis' "Final Solution," the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint. . . [where] many young people were killed; countless others were interned. Some two hundred thousand Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them."

"All of us in business have a responsibility to maintain the industrial base on which we depend and the society whose adaptability — and stability — we may have taken for granted."

"Each company, ruggedly individualistic, does its best to expand efficiently and improve its own profitability. However, our pursuit of our individual businesses, which often involves transferring manufacturing and a great deal of engineering out of the country, has hindered our ability to bring innovations to scale at home. Without scaling, we don't just lose jobs—we lose our hold on new technologies. Losing the ability to scale will ultimately damage our capacity to innovate."

"Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive."

"A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done will be done."

"Technology will always win. You can delay technology by legal interference, but technology will flow around legal barriers."

"A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation."

"You have no choice but to operate in a world shaped by globalization and the information revolution. There are two options: adapt or die."

"You need to try to do the impossible, to anticipate the unexpected. And when the unexpected happens, you should double the efforts to make order from the disorder it creates in your life. The motto I'm advocating is — Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos. Does that mean that you shouldn't plan? Not at all. You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate fires, so it has to shape a flexible organization that is capable of responding to unpredictable events."

"Your career is your business, and you are its CEO."

"In various bits and pieces, we have steered Intel from a start-up to one of the central companies of the information economy."

"Technology happens, it's not good, it's not bad. Is steel good or bad?"

"Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, Good companies survive them, Great companies are improved by them."

"When I came to Intel, I was scared to death. I left a very secure job where I knew what I was doing and started running R&D for a brand new venture in untried territory. It was terrifying."

"Just as you would not permit a fellow employee to steal a piece of office equipment worth $2,000, you shouldn't let anyone walk away with the time of his fellow managers."

"I never think of the measures necessary for the peace and good order of the colonies without pain. There must be an abridgment of what are called English liberties. I relieve myself by considering that in a remove from a state of nature to the most perfect state of government, there must be a great restraint of natural liberty. I doubt whether it is possible to project a system of government in which a colony 3000 miles distant from the parent state shall enjoy all the liberty of the parent state. I am certain I have never yet seen the projection. I wish the good of the colony when I wish to see some further restraint of liberty rather than the connexion with the parent state should be broken; for I am sure such a breach must prove the ruin of the colony."

"His favorite cut, the Romney crop / Cuts everything but the very top / The 1% of the 1% / When he said "the people", well that's what he meant / Like Robin Hood, 'cept opposite / That's Romney, Mitt / The Demon Barber of Wall Street"

"I'm just trying to protect my stacks / Mitt Romney don't pay no tax / Mitt Romney don't pay no tax"

"In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I've ever seen run for the Presidency of the United States…Let's take him for a minute… Harvard Law School, Harvard MBA. Starts up , builds it… Bain gets in trouble sometime in 1990s, Mitt comes back to fix it… Bain Capital then has its best years ever. In '99, leaves, goes to the Olympics, I was involved in that… we were in deep trouble. They were losing money, they had a scandal… and then 9/11 comes and everyone wants to cancel it, we've got a big commitment. He goes out there, fixes it totally. Again, fixes that up, comes back, runs for governor, wins the governorship. The government [is in debt]. He gets it out and gets a surplus. Who! We haven't had anybody do all these things! Do you think Richard Nixon did that? Do you think Bill Clinton had those credentials!? Certainly Barack Obama didn't have those credentials!.. I mean, come on! We've got a guy here who's a leader, that's demonstrated beyond anyone we've ever had! Great family. This is the…! We're the luckiest people in the world to have this guy there at this point in time."

"I wish you to be successful, because this success is needed to the United States, of course, but to Europe and the rest of the world, too. Gov. Romney, get your success — be successful!"

"Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania: Done."

"Mitt Romney is a mixed up man who doesn't have a clue. No wonder he lost!"