Kevin O'Leary Quotes

If a man could give birth it would be to a book - it's an 18-month gestation period.

Money has no grey areas. You either make it or you lose it.

Steve Jobs had his critics. Some saw him as an egomaniac, and others, as a control freak.

Protecting Americans from harm goes beyond police and national defense. It's imperative that we not destroy the commons, the physical environment on which we rely.

Unions are about the collective leverage, the power of numbers versus the power of capital.

I like gold because it is a stabilizer; it is an insurance policy.

Until Americans feel that their core asset - their homes - are stabilized, they are not going to have the animal spirits and they will continue to have less buying power.

I think a book is your calling card, your business card.

If you want a friend, buy a dog.

If I were the president of the United States, I would make unions illegal. They no longer serve a functional purpose in democracy, in my view.

I'm starting to think about things that I want to do, things that are fun. One of them is driving a car like a Porsche. I've driven a lot of cars - sedans, trucks and big family vehicles all year long. But there's nothing like a four-wheel-drive Porsche.

There's something very visceral about watching people beg for money. It's powerful.

I look at Twitter as brand building.

Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas

I remember failing reading in school at a young age, and you just kinda get left behind and I felt helpless.

Don't cry about money, it never cries for you.

All businesses require capital, management and labor, and business executives, wanting to grow and maintain profitable enterprises, have a strong incentive to keep costs, including labor, as low as possible.

Building fast-growing, globally competitive companies is tough.

When you come to 'Shark Tank,' the only person you should listen to is me, because you know you're getting the truth. I'll decide if it's worth it, and after I'm finished, the rest of the people can look into it.

Money is my military, each dollar a soldier. I never send my money into battle unprepared and undefended. I send it to conquer and take currency prisoner and bring it back to me.

For whatever reason somebody can be convinced to buy a PC, it opens up a whole new market for all of us in the software business.

All we do is bring the debate from both sides, and let you as a viewer decide where you want to end up on the issue. That's very important. That's exactly what happens in 'Redemption Inc.'

Downturns are the best time to start businesses, because you develop discipline that's very lean and mean in terms of how to spend money. And those habits serve you very well in good times.

There are a lot of idiot fund managers out there who add no value to the process at all.

There's only one side with me. You get the right side. You get the correct version of the facts.

My problem with unions is they breed mediocrity.

I never, ever, ever let emotion get in the way of an investment.

The road to riches is never straight and narrow. It can be riddled with financial land mines.

You either make it illegal, in which case you support a huge underground economy or you tax it within the limits people can afford.

I have met many entrepreneurs who have the passion and even the work ethic to succeed - but who are so obsessed with an idea that they don't see its obvious flaws. Think about that. If you can't even acknowledge your failures, how can you cut the rope and move on?

Working 24 hours a day isn't enough anymore. You have to be willing to sacrifice everything to be successful, including your personal life, your family life, maybe more. If people think it's any less, they're wrong, and they will fail.

I'm not trying to make friends, I'm trying to make money.

In his first term, President Barack Obama played a cautious manager navigating the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression and cleaning up the messes left by President George W. Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We have to change public perception of ex-convicts. Most Canadians don't realize that when you come out of prison, you're a complete pariah. You can't get a car loan or money from a bank to start a business. So most end up back in prison within 24 months. It's just so wrong. We need to fix this problem.

I think every entrepreneur in Canada owes the next generation a road map of how to do it again.

So much of life is a negotiation - so even if you're not in business, you have opportunities to practice all around you.

The so-called conservative right that now dominates the Republican Party is, in fact, extreme, radical, and deeply at odds with the American political tradition; it poses a profound threat to the American republic. The assault on liberalism by the right targets not only the New Deal state, but the Constitution and the American political system as well.

When you bring an idea that has no merit to me, and you ask me to comment on it, I'm going to tell you it has no merit.

I actually think being an entrepreneur is a state of mind. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, my thesis is that you have to sacrifice everything for some period in your life to be successful. You have to be myopic and completely focused and unbalanced in every way. Once you've achieved success, you're free to do whatever you like.

The practical reality of managing cars in the family - I do 36-month leases. I think they're horrible investments. And you want to give them back after their warranty is over.

Here's how I think of my money - as soldiers - I send them out to war everyday. I want them to take prisoners and come home, so there's more of them.

I'm not trying to make friends, I'm just trying to make money.

Don't cry for money. It never cries for you.

Do you want to be rich or not? Let's get focused on that, buddy

Being an employee is a bad outcome. You want to avoid that. Being an employee is never a good outcome. That's just an opinion.

When you're an investor, you can look at the quantitative and qualitative elements of an investment, but there's a third aspect: What you feel in your gut.

Don't let the dark clouds of greed confuse you

I'm proud to be on the CBC and to see the management here represents both sides of every story. This is what's unique about the new CBC: you get a Kevin O'Leary on it when five years ago you wouldn't.

Having won re-election convincingly and against the economic odds, President Obama quickly made good on his promise of maintaining taxes as they are for the middle class while raising them on the wealthiest Americans.

Life is hard, money doesn't care, your tears don't add value

You'd rather own gold; never own the miner.

I see negotiations as an honest attempt to reach a deal that's great for everyone at the table. But sometimes, for whatever reason, that's impossible. You need to accept that possibility-don't make a deal for the sake of making a deal. If you do, chances are it will fall apart later anyway, with costs and headaches for everyone involved. And once you walk away, don't come back.

A lot of people have said a lot of great things about Steve Jobs. And for good reason: he built the world's second-most valuable company, with billions in profits and products that have improved every aspect of our lives. But Steve didn't get there by being a soft, fluffy, Kumbaya-type leader.

As far as I'm concerned, Twitter has wiped out Facebook. I'm done with Facebook.

Many blue-collar families struggling to pay rent would be happy to skip paying optional union dues.

I'd rather invest in an entrepreneur who has failed before than one who assumes success from day one.

(On soft launches) It allows you to test your assumptions and see which ones you got right, and more, importantly, which ones you got wrong. A big hard launch is expensive. Getting even one thing wrong can force you to go out of business.