“I love to compete. Somebody out there is competing against me, and I want to kick your ass. I say it all the time: Business is the ultimate sport.”

“We can talk about republican or democratic approaches to the economy, but until you fix the student loan bubble – and that’s where the real bubble is – and the tuition bubble, we don’t have a chance. All this other stuff is shuffling deck- chairs on the Titanic.”

“If you are ahead of the curve and you can anticipate where things are going … anything is possible.”

“It is so much easier to be nice, to be respectful, to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and try to understand how you might help them before they ask for help, than it is to try to mend a broken customer relationship.”

“I create offbeat advice; I don’t follow it. I rarely take third-party advice on my investments.”

“It comes down to finding something you love to do, then just trying to be great at it.”

“A sure sign of failure for a startup is when someone sends me logo-embroidered polo shirts. If your people are at shows and in public, it’s okay to buy for your own employees, but if you really think people are going to wear your branded polo when they’re out and about, you are mistaken and have no idea how to spend your money.”

“The number-one job of the hedge-fund manager is not to make sure that you can retire with a smile on your face – it’s for him to retire with a smile on his face.”

“When you’ve got 10,000 people trying to do the same thing, why would you want to be number 10,001?”

“I’m a big believer that you always reiterate, you always learn, you always realize your business is evolving.”

“Life gets easier when you don’t have to worry about the bills.”

“It’s hard not to fool yourself. Everyone tells you how they are going to be special. But few do the work to get there. Do the work.”

“I’m always afraid of failing. It’s great motivation to work harder.”

“One thing we can all control is effort. Put in the time to become an expert in whatever you’re doing. It will give you an advantage because most people don’t do this.”

“I want the bad news first. I don’t want the ‘Oh, we hade a great week and Billy…’ You know, great, I’m sure Billy had fun. I want to read: ‘God damn it! We lost this sale, and here is why.’”

“There is very little knowledge that can’t be obtained through effort.”

“We don’t sell wins or losses. The one thing you can’t control in sports is which games you are going to win or which games you are going to lose. But what I could control was the experience the fans have.”

“You learn in life that a lot of things are the result of effort, but some things, in terms of scale, are random.”

“Patent law holds us back, in every which way, shape or form. There is place for it, in physical products, in pharmaceuticals, but in software in particular, there is no place for it.”

“Those back-to-back experiences confirmed what I already knew: That I was a shitty-ass employee and I’d better start my own business.”

“You have to learn how to use time wisely and be productive. How wisely you use your time will have far more impact on your life and success than any amount of money.”

“Money is a scoreboard where you can rank how you’re doing against other people.”

“I retired at twenty-nine, bought a life-time pass on American Airlines and my only goal in life was to party like a mad man and get drunk with as many people as possible. And I was happy right there. But when we started the streaming business, I knew it could be something big…”

“Entrepreneurs have to be brutally honest with themselves and recognize where they have added value and where they have gone along for the ride.”