Michael R. Bloomberg > Quotes

“No place epitomizes the American experience and the American spirit more than New York City.”
― Michael Bloomberg

“If you have to compete based on capital, the giant always wins. If you can compete based on smarts, flexibility, and willingness to give more for less, then small companies like Bloomberg clearly have an advantage.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg

“Those enterprises that see new needs and react more quickly, win!”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg, Revised and Updated

“And, as I would learn later on in my life - at Salomon Brothers and in my own company - it's the "doers", the lean and hungry ones, those with ambition in their eyes and fire in their bellies and no notions of social caste, who go the furthest and achieve the most.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg

“The changing climate should be seen as a series of discrete, manageable problems that can be attacked from all angles simultaneously. Each problem has a solution. And better still, each solution can make our society healthier and our economy stronger.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet

“Did I want to risk an embarrassing and costly failure? Absolutely. Happiness for me has always been the thrill of the unknown, trying something that everyone says can't be done, feeling that gnawing pit in my stomach that says "Danger ahead". Would it be nice not to have uncertainty, to sit back and "veg out"? When the phone rings constantly, when people keep demanding attention, when I desperately need time to myself, it seems an attractive notion just to "chuck it all". But then nobody calls, nobody stops by, and soon I'm nibbling my nails and getting irritable, and I realize that's not what I want. It sounds good. In reality though, I want action, I want challenge.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg

“For the first time in the history of the world more people will die from overeating than undereating this year.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg

“A better way to evaluate a company is to talk to the experts. No, I don’t mean journalists or analysts. I mean those who really know what’s going on and what the potential”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg, Revised and Updated

“If you’re going to succeed, you need a vision, one that’s affordable, practical, and fills a customer need. Then, go for it. Don’t worry too much about the details. Don’t second-guess your creativity. Avoid overanalyzing the new project’s potential. Most importantly, don’t strategize about the long term too much.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg, Revised and Updated

“Every morning when we get up, we relish the day’s upcoming battles. They keep us alive, and they keep Bloomberg’s corporate family thriving. We can’t wait for tomorrow. Who says we can’t do that? What do you mean they’ll beat us? Have them put on their boxing gloves, and send them into the ring. We’re ready!”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg, Revised and Updated

“The two of us have no interest in the tired old debate that is still playing out on Capitol Hill. Our interest is not in winning an argument or an election. It’s in saving lives, promoting prosperity, and stopping global warming.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet

“Even before the convention, the results from the state and local consultations suggested a surprising shift in the membership’s concerns—after more than a hundred years in which the protection of wild places was our highest priority, club leaders were now saying that climate change needed to be at the top of our agenda.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet

“the United States, the debate has too often centered on how likely various doom-and-gloom scenarios are, and when they’ll occur. But scaring people doesn’t work.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet

“Defense, it is clear, is not enough. To find an answer, we decided to mount the most intensive consultation process in the club’s modern history, inviting over five thousand grassroots leaders to participate in a series of meetings, surveys, and discussions. It culminated in our first national convention, which we held in San Francisco in September 2005.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet

“the key questions are more important than ever: What is the problem? How valuable is the solution? Can we provide it profitably? Where will our competition come from? When I started out with computers, I believed what the manufacturers’ promotional materials promised. I grew into a skeptical, nontrusting cynic, but one who believes more than most in the potential technology has to improve our lives. What I learned on the journey was that we are all humans, and technology exists to serve us, not the reverse. The challenge is to resolve people issues, not software ones.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg, Revised and Updated

“I didn’t know it yet, but this new priority would mean enormous changes in the way I saw the world and environmentalism. Previously environmentalists worked to stop bad things—pollution, clear-cutting, overfishing—but we more or less accepted the big-picture American economy, with the established industries that made it up. Not anymore. Now we were about to find ourselves in a different business: helping to foster a different kind of economic development, one based on knowledge and technology rather than fossil fuels. After thirty-five years of working to clean up after twentieth-century industrialism, environmentalists were about to plunge into creating its twenty-first-century replacement. But before we could go full tilt toward the new, we had to stop the last spasms of the old—an energy future crafted during George W. Bush’s first term by Vice President Cheney.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet

“over the past decade Congress has not passed a single bill that takes direct aim at climate change. Yet at the same time, the United States has led the world in reducing emissions.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet

“The reality is that the uncertainty involved means we do not know with precision whether we can achieve either of those goals; nor do we know for certain what the consequences will be if we do not. Regardless, most people put little faith in projections that far out, which is understandable. Scientists have been wrong plenty of times before. What people want to know is not exactly what will happen to the Earth eighty years from now but what will happen to their house, their job, and their community this year. Telling people that they might possibly save the Earth from distant and uncertain harm is not a great way to convince them to support a particular policy.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet

“Banks and venture capitalists can be the worst enemies of entrepreneurs. They create doubt in entrepreneurs’ minds, with their insistence on detailed game plans before they lend. They want five-year projections in a world that makes six-month forward planning difficult, even for stable and mature businesses, and they insist on “revenue budgeting” when no one knows what the new product will look like or who’ll buy how much. And worst of all, they think an originator will be helped by their oh-so-insightful views on how he or she should run the new business. Often, they kill off what’s different, special, and full of potential.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg, Revised and Updated

“vociferous”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg, Revised and Updated

“Instead of arguing about making sacrifices, let’s talk about how we can make money. Instead of pitting the environment versus the economy, let’s consider market principles and economic growth. Instead of focusing on polar bears, let’s focus on asthmatic children. And instead of putting all hope in the federal government, let’s empower cities, regions, businesses, and citizens to accelerate the progress they are already making on their own.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet

“When I saw that screen light up that day in the Merrill Lynch offices, I lost any residual doubt that Bloomberg could make it. We had picked just the right project. It was big enough to be useful, small enough to be possible. Start with a small piece; fulfill one goal at a time, on time. Do it with all things in life. Sit down and learn to read one-syllable words. If you try to read Chaucer in elementary school, you’ll never accomplish anything. You can’t jump to the end game right away, in computers, politics, love, or any other aspect of life.”
― Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg by Bloomberg, Revised and Updated