Dan Quayle Quotes

As an entrepreneur, you can always find a solution if you try hard enough.

Like many of my fellow entrepreneurs, I didn't create Hearsay Social with my co-founder Steve Garrity because it would be fun and easy, but because we're at our best when faced with enormous challenges.

I cannot think of anything characteristically American that was not produced by toil. I cannot think of any American man or woman preeminent in the history of our nation who did not reach their place through toil. I cannot think of anything that represents the American people as a whole so adequately as honest work.

At YC we have this public phrase, and it's relentlessly resourceful.

I always hustled to make money and pay for school. I was never afraid of hard work.

What I'm trying to do is get this message out about self-empowerment, entrepreneurial spirit and true Americanism - the way we were when we changed the world, when Edison was alone, failing his 2,000th time on the lightbulb.

My dad is like a cactus - introverted and tough. I'm a people person, like my mom, but I got my competitiveness from my dad. He came to this country from Belarus with nothing and built a real business. He's my hero for giving me that need to run a business and for having enormous confidence in me.

Learning how to work and learning how to fail is important.

Americans understand that one of our great national strengths is innovation. Great innovators - Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others - are household names.

I've always been a workhorse, and I've been supporting myself since I was 15.

The United States has never been afraid of a challenge. In times of crisis, it is American innovation and ingenuity that has forged the path to progress and prosperity.

I have seen American determination in people like Debbi Sommers. She runs a furniture rental business for conventions in Las Vegas. When 9/11 hit, and again, when the recession tanked the conventions business, she didn't give up, close down, or lay off her people. She taught them not just to rent furniture, but also to manufacture it.

I have a mother who never took no for an answer when it came to her creative pursuits. She started a hair salon in her spare bedroom and four years later had 30 employees.

I'm an entrepreneur. I always have been. I am curious, and I enjoy solving problems.

My father bought three ramshackle houses, rebuilt them, rented them out, kept clawing his way up the ladder. A man with a third grade education from the south.

America itself has been through so many challenges since that fateful day back in 1776. Our culture has been a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-go-to-work culture.

This may sound trite, but I believe it to be true: Entrepreneurship is the fabric of what America is all about.

Americans want to work. We want to take care of our families. It's in our DNA, the American work ethic.

I didn't have that when I invented MyPillow. I didn't have a safety net.

Everything I've achieved has come from perseverance. I've never met another entrepreneur who had a painless path to success - everyone who tries to bring new ideas to the world is tested.

Every entrepreneur has to deal with hardship, but if we're tough enough and thoughtful enough, we can find a way to make hard things make us better.

The thing about genius is it will never yield to circumstances. Genius regards what's given as the beginning of its need to find or devise something else.

America has an ability to try to make some things happen that other countries don't necessarily have.

Now, ideas are the raw material of progress. Everything first takes shape in the form of an idea. But an idea itself is worth nothing. An idea, like a machine, must have power applied to it before it can accomplish anything. The men who have won fame and fortune through having an idea are those who devoted every ounce of their strength and every dollar they could muster to putting it into operation. Ford had a big idea, but he had to sweat and suffer and sacrifice to make it work.

A brilliant idea doesn't guarantee a successful invention. Real magic comes from a brilliant idea combined with willpower, tenacity, and a willingness to make mistakes.