Kenneth Langone Quotes

We had 90 percent taxes before in America. All right? Didn't work.

When a New York attorney general brings a lawsuit against a prominent business person, there are two things you can count on out of that office - lots of political bluster and little accountability.

I don't know whether other people should or shouldn't pay taxes. I know I can, and I am willing, to pay more taxes. I know I should not get Social Security. I don't need it.

My first job was as a day laborer on the construction of the Long Island Expressway more than 50 years ago.

I consider myself a significant supporter of any candidate I work for, and I am certainly generous, I think, with my own funds.

I don't really know and I don't care what I'm worth.

A lawsuit with no legal precedent, seeking no damages, from no jury, in the name of stopping something that isn't happening? Only in New York.

Dick Grasso would be a superb mayor of the City of New York. He loves the city.

I decided I was going to go to Wall Street, and I was introduced to some people ... I met a guy who knew a bond trader at Pressprich, and he got me to meet him and the guy that ran their sales department, Jack Collin.

The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful gesture.

My connection was we never want to put ourselves in a position as a nation where we pit group against group.

America is a powerful country. America is a great country. We have enormous resiliency. Any time we have had our back to the wall, we have come out a winner.

The essence of business to me is great people run great companies. Mediocre people don't do a very good job.

I have, never, ever once, ever gotten anything from any politician I've ever helped. Not one thing.

I'm a stockholder. I own a lot of stocks.

Buy a stock at two, have it go to 30. You feel like you're on top of the world.

America has thrived on capitalism, and America will thrive again on capitalism.

A little more than 30 years ago, Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, Pat Farrah and I got together and founded The Home Depot.

When then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued me in 2003 over my stewardship as a director of the New York Stock Exchange, the NYSE's legal expenses were more than $100 million, which made it perhaps the priciest litigation in the state's history.

My own feeling on the consumer is that he - he or she looks at what it costs them to pay their bills every month as opposed to how much debt they have.

You want to close the income inequality gap in part? Give us better educated kids out of high school. Give us kids that can challenge and succeed in the challenge with technology. You give us those kinds of kids, and watch the needle move.

You only have to worry about going to jail if you break the law. That's pretty simple.

A million dollars in the presidential election is a spit in the ocean. It's not a lot of money.

I should not get Social Security. I think it's a travesty for a man of my success and of my means to get anything from the federal government.

People can't live on $7.50 an hour.

People making $1 million a year are not going to do anything different if they pay more taxes.

Home Depot has never hired one human being for minimum wage, not one. We have always paid a premium over minimum wage.

Nothing so enchants attorneys general, their eyes generally fixed on higher public office, as slinging accusations against successful financial executives. Preening press conferences and fawning media coverage are virtually guaranteed, whether or not the charges have substance.

I don't need a job. I don't want an appointment. I don't want to be on a commission. I don't want to be ambassador to nowhere.

Contrary to what you might assume, I didn't start with any advantages and neither did most of the successful people I know. I am the grandson of immigrants who came to this country seeking basic economic and personal liberty.

Ronald Reagan would never go into the Oval Office without his jacket on - that's how much he revered the presidency.

I'm nuts, I'm rich, and boy, do I love a fight!

The biggest single challenge to America and our future is income inequality. We've got to fix it.

The economy is a collection of emotions.

As a little boy, my first job was delivering newspapers, and then I had a variety of different jobs. I worked in a butcher shop. I worked in a supermarket. I worked in construction. I dug ditches on the Long Island Expressway in 1954, 1955, 1956.