Quite frankly, I am not very comfortable in chitchat. When I go to board meetings, I arrive two minutes before and leave when it's over. I don't stay for lunch or go early and have coffee.

If life was so easy that you could just go buy success, there would be a lot more successful companies in the world. Successful enterprises are built from the ground up.

The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.

In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.

People don't do what you expect but what you inspect.

You don't get points for predicting rain. You get points for building arks.

Watch the turtle. He only moves forward by sticking his neck out.

The rewards system is a powerful driver of behavior and therefore culture.

When I arrived at IBM, there were 'Team' signs all around. I asked, 'How do people get paid?' They told me, 'We pay people based on individual performance.

It is not about bits, bytes and protocols, but profits, losses and margins.

We built this company from the customer back, not from the company out.

Living to please people is like chasing many shadows at the same time!

If you are thinking of making everyone happy, you are going to be a great prostitute.

Nothing is less predictable than the development of an active scientific field.

People who say, 'Let the chips fall where they may,' usually figure they will not be hit by a chip.

What we value determines what we do.

The end of lower art is to please, the end of average art is to raise the top, the end of superior art is to free.

I think that nobody gets mad at me anymore, no matter what I say, because I don't think I'm mean. I am interested in what's next.

Bob Arum and Don King can do their thing but if I fought for those guys and they put the money up like they are supposed to then I don't have a problem.

Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power.

If you’re not pissing someone off, you probably aren’t doing anything important.