Ellen Tauscher Quotes

If achieving the Hong Kong dream becomes a vanishing hope, then our society will suffer. What would the Hong Kong dream be? It's no different from the American dream, whereby an everyday man on the street who works hard would be able to make good savings and use those savings as equity for their future small business.

Every business decision I ever made I learned from my grandfather Papa Sam. He moved here from Russia when he was a boy. He worked his way up selling newspapers and ladies' handbags, and eventually, he became Cadillac Sam, one of the biggest car dealers in Chicago.

I built a huge profitable business with no debt.

We have lost that which has made us great over the generations, and that is the sense of individual and personal responsibility that we can come up, we can pursue our dreams and our aspirations and we won't be blocked by government regulation, by the inability to get a loan as a small business to make our dreams come true.

The American economy has been built and sustained by risk-taking entrepreneurs whose pioneering ideas and hard work gave birth to flourishing businesses.

When did it become a problem to be a small businessman and become successful? The small businessman - like my father, or like me?

My father was an entrepreneur - a sign maker, and he had about 20 employees - and often he'd take me to business meetings, and I would listen to him talk with his workers and customers. We would also talk a lot about business over dinner.

I have started many companies now worth more than $100 million. So I know a little about business.

My parents worked harder than anyone I have ever met. They had so many businesses. There was the motel, but throughout my childhood, they also had a drive-through dairy, a gas station, a clothing store, a computer reselling business.

My family were all entrepreneurs, including my parents and grandparents.

My grandmother was divorced, and she had 10 children herself. She never finished high school. She started selling lace on the side of the road and then grew that into a multimillion-dollar business - a retail store selling mostly furniture and appliances.

I had the good fortune to be raised in the 1940s and the 1950s. As I entered business in the late 1950s and 1960s, America was just coming into its own as a great industrial power. It allowed young entrepreneurs to start their engines, to start their businesses, to borrow a little money and to leverage what they had.

I come from a family of traders; my grandmother and my mother were very good at making money.

I like the mentality of the Americans. It's like when you talk about money.

My dad was an entrepreneurial businessman, and maybe I got some of his ability.

I've lived the American dream. I was born and raised on the farm, first in my family to graduate from college. I spent 13 years working in our family business.

I've made a profit from everything I have done in life.

It's a fire, it's a passion to get out and to create and to innovate. And that I've always enjoyed and I've always been very proud of is that the people I've done business with, the people around me have always made money.

Conventional wisdom suggests the primary motivator for entrepreneurs is money or wealth creation and, in fact, much of the political debate tends to center around what kind of tax or regulatory policy changes will turn corporate suits into small business adventurers overnight.

Free enterprise empowers entrepreneurs who have ideas and imagination, investors who take risks, and workers who hone their skills and offer their labor.

Business people have been made into these rock stars because they've made a lot of money.

In the States, entrepreneurs inspire a lot of people and are respected for creating jobs. That makes people dream and feel happy for their country.

I prospered very quickly. Very quickly, I became politically empowered. I was running my own business.

My goal in the beginning was to buy my mother a house. Now I realize, okay, if I really focus and become a key player in business, then I can build an empire.

I grew up in a family business... that really has provided the core of my belief in American small business, and in America's ability to grow and operate important businesses that can compete and be successful.