All Quotes

"৬৯ সালে বিহারিরা আমগো মারছে। বোম মাইরা, আগুন লাগাইয়া দিত। আমরা বাঙালি পরিবার যে দিকে থাকতাম, ওই দিকে নির্যাতন করত। এখন যেইডা আসাদ এভিনিউ, ওইটা আইয়ূব এভিনিউ ছিল। ওইখান দিয়া পাকিস্তানি গাড়ি যাইত। আমরা পাকিস্তানিগো হারিকেন দিয়া সিগন্যাল দিতাম, আমগো বাঁচান। হ্যারা আমরা না বাঁচাইয়া, উল্টা আমগো দিকে গুলি করত। তখন আমগো তিনজন মারা গেছিল।"

"The most important thing is to pursue whatever you want to do in life and don't give up."

"There’s always a beginning to every success. “As I say, work hard. If you really love what you’re doing, strive."

"Pursue your dreams, and be patient because not everything will be given to you."

"Always be thankful to those who have helped you along the way."

"It's a waste of time to be insecure or envious of others-just focus on your own work."

"Whatever they had abroad, chances were, we had it here, too.” Call it globalization."

"It hasn’t exactly been the smoothest ride. We’re safe and healthy, but my body has been gently reminding me that some things need to change."

"To my little one, who I can’t wait to meet: my promise will always be to love you through every chapter, every stage, in every moment of every day."

"My first birth caught me off guard and left me with some trauma because I didn’t know what to expect. This birth was the opposite. I was prepared with things I packed but never used, techniques I didn't really have the time to apply, and plans that didn't unfold the way I imagined. Both births were special and beautiful in their own ways, and God carried me through each of those journeys just as He always does."

"I don't do it for the money. I've got enough, much more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks."

"I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present."

"Sometimes it pays to be a little wild."

"Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you're generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make."

"My philosophy is always to hire the best from the best."

"Deal-making is an ability you're born with. It's in the genes."

"I like thinking big. I always have. To me it's very simple: if you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small, because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage."

"I wasn't satisfied just to earn a good living. I was looking to make a statement."

"People think I'm a gambler. I've never gambled in my life. To me, a gambler is someone who plays slot machines. I prefer to own slot machines. It's a very good business being the house."

"The point is that you can't be too greedy."

"I'm a great believer in asking everyone for an opinion before I make a decision. ... I ask and I ask and I ask, until I begin to get a gut feeling about something. And that's when I make a decision. I have learned much more from conducting my own random surveys than I could ever have learned from the greatest of consulting firms."

"The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you're dead. The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have. Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, simply can't do without. Unfortunately, that isn't always the case, which is why leverage often requires imagination, and salesmanship."

"The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion."

"My experience is that if you're fighting for something you believe in—even if it means alienating some people along the way—things usually work out for the best in the end."

"One of the problems when you become successful is that jealousy and envy inevitably follow. There are people—I categorize them as life's losers—who get their sense of accomplishment and achievement from trying to stop others. As far as I'm concerned, if they had any real ability they wouldn't be fighting me, they'd be doing something constructive themselves."

"You can't con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on."

"Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game."

"Get in, get it done, get it done right, and get out."

"The most important thing in life is to love what you're doing, because that's the only way you'll ever be really good at it."

"You can't be scared. You do your thing, you hold your ground, you stand up tall, and whatever happens, happens."

"My own mother was a housewife all her life. And yet it's turned out that I've hired a lot of women for top jobs, and they've been among my best people. Often, in fact, they are far more effective than the men around them."

"In the end, you're measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish."

"What I admire most are people who put themselves directly on the line."

"In my life, there are two things I've found I'm very good at: overcoming obstacles and motivating good people to do their best work."

"This boastful, boyishly disarming, thoroughly engaging personal history offers an inside look at aspects of financing, development and construction in big-time New York real estate."

"(About Giulio Andreotti) Opposed to general ideas, pragmatic and realistic like few others, with his own streak of “Catholic Giolittism”."

"Mrs Gandhi was moving closer to the West. Even within the non-aligned countries, she was forging ever stronger ties with the world of European democracies. :*In Italy, grief but also fears for the future, “'L'Unità”', 1 November 1984"

"There can be no united Italy without the foundation laid by Garibaldi. The Garibaldi legend is, in reality, the only national thread running through our modern history."

"Solve the mystery of the Mig23 and you will have found the key to discovering the truth about Ustica."

"It will be under the aegis of the invincible Axis, the new Europe of Law, Justice, Freedom and Love. The Europe of the future, which is the goal of that bloc of countries headed by the tripartite pact between Italy, Germany and Japan."

"Yes: the case of Prezzolini was one of the most significant in contemporary culture in our country. Prezzolini embodied a constant critical and sceptical need in a world of culture increasingly tending towards conformism and orthodoxy, or rather conformism and orthodoxies."

"(About Carlo Donat-Cattin) A man who constantly fought to maintain a strong link between institutional structures and the needs of the world of work."

"(About Bettino Ricasoli) Grumpy, reclusive, wild: almost always shut away in his Brolio, from which he rarely descended, and with the calculated slowness of a sovereign. But the only one who exercised undisputed authority over all the other notables of Tuscany: “the only eminent individual known, revered and esteemed in Italy and abroad” (as Celestino Bianchi, his devoted secretary and incomparable collaborator, would say a few years later, even though he would not grant him the intimacy of “tu” in return for his many services). He was also the court of last resort in all doubtful or difficult cases, such as during the days of bloodshed and tension that followed the Aspromonte incident. (I partiti politici nella Firenze capitale, Ch. II, pp. 82-83)"

"Ricasoli embodied the concept of the modern state, which does not tolerate limitations and competition from other powers, which is based on the irreplaceable and pre-eminent values of civil morality, which replaces religious morality with military discipline, which attributes to the authority of the officer the value of priestly authority, which contrasts combatants with missionaries, the armed forces to the regular clergy, and universities to seminaries and convents. (Appendix, 1. Ricasoliana, Ch. I, p. 262)"

"If Mazzini is the prophet of the left, Ricasoli can rightly be considered the prophet of the right: among all the successors of Cavour, among all the politicians who governed the new state in the fifteen years from 1861 to 1876, among all those who appeared “moderate” and in reality carried out the only profound revolution in our history, the Tuscan baron is the only one who inspired his political action with a religious conception of life, the only one who instilled in the acts of power a secret “reformist mysticism”, such as to justify all his audaciousness and allow all his conquests. (Appendix, 1. Ricasoliana, Ch. I, p. 277)."

"Nothing more than messianic socialism, socialism that aims at a golden age, a city of sunshine, perfect justice, nothing more than such socialism repels the Christian conception. Christianity, due to its insurmountable pessimistic prejudice, cannot even conceive of the total salvation and liberation of men on earth, and by virtue of an earthly order. Hell is the punishment for violated charity. Only punishment can achieve justice. Eternal damnation is the great disciplinary force of the world. (I, I; p. 16)"

"Charity and forgiveness: this is the “socialism” of Christ, this is Christian society. In life there is not, there cannot be, absolution (only God will absolve); but there can be, there is, and there will be an amnesty, a daily amnesty. Life is a punishment (this is the meaning of original sin, the deepest interpretation of human pain): but it is a punishment that is pardoned in life and absolved in death. This is the greatest justice. (I, I; p. 17)"

"Togliatti was a small, cold man, sharply intelligent, with an amused smile in private, which when speaking in public could turn into scathing sarcasm."

"Alicia Keys as Lynette"

"The purpose of the Church, the sole and supreme repository of revelation, remains in any case to summarise and resolve politics in religion. But the purpose of the State, of any State worthy of the name, is precisely the same, reversed: to resolve religion in politics, God in man. Every State is also a Church; political authority is necessarily moral authority; political history logically takes the form of “sacred history”. Its political ends are also moral and religious: they encompass and reabsorb within themselves all possible morality and religion. (I, I; p. 20)"