Naveen Jain Quotes

America has always fascinated me; it's a country where you can make it from one side to the other with no money, by hook or by crook.

When I first came out, I was a film student, and my mom sewed clothes. I was already doing a million things then, whatever it took to survive. If I had to braid someone's hair to get one pound for my lunch money, that's what I did.

My family didn't have money, and I think it made me fearless. I'm willing to try everything and not be afraid because what's the worst that can be happen? It might not work out, but I can't be worse off than when I was a kid.

I'll dispose of my teeth as I see fit, and after they've gone, I'll get along. I started off living on gruel, and by God, I can always go back to it again.

We were trained to live by our wits, in any circumstance.

In order to be creatively satisfied and financially secure, you need to be a self-starter. I'm always assuming nothing's going to work out and I have to roll up my sleeves.

I have no definite talent or trade, and how I stay alive is largely a matter of magic.

I've never had much and I've never needed much. If I had only two bucks in my pocket, I knew I could spend it because I could always do another show of some kind, even on a sidewalk.

I was selling stuff probably since I could remember, like 6 or 7 years old. I was always out there helping my mom and dad sell watches, glasses, CDs, DVDs, stuff like that. Whatever we could put our hands on. I did it until I was around 17. But I was just doing it because I had to. There was no other option.

Bill Hewlett and I were brought up in the Depression. We weren't interested in the idea of making any money. Our idea was if you couldn't find a job, you'd make one for yourself.

We learned to be patient observers like the owl. We learned cleverness from the crow, and courage from the jay, who will attack an owl ten times its size to drive it off its territory. But above all of them ranked the chickadee because of its indomitable spirit.

In my experience, poor people are the world's greatest entrepreneurs. Every day, they must innovate in order to survive. They remain poor because they do not have the opportunities to turn their creativity into sustainable income.

Waiting to be hired, as an actor, especially, is soul-destroying... There is always something you can do... Create something, a play reading... Anything. But don't rely on other people to come to you. Put yourself out there.

But I love the idea - whether it's in my work or where I live - exploring new frontier, and I like putting myself in strange places and trying to survive and figure things out and gather up an infrastructure. I like knowing that I could figure out a way to live anywhere.

Every successful person I have heard of has done the best he could with the conditions as he found them, and not waited until next year for better.

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

The environment I was raised in, you had to, to survive.

When my father came over here penniless with $100 sewn into his underwear, thank God some well-meaning liberal didn't come put his arm around him and say, 'Let me take care of you.'

I'm me, I live from film to mouth.

Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.

You can sometimes learn more working with less talented people, because you learn to survive.

It's all about hustling, whether it's in Boston or the film industry. I've been hustling my entire life - acting my way into trouble and acting my way back out again. I'm just fortunate to have had the opportunity to apply it in a different direction.

The sun of liberty is set; you must light up the candle of industry and economy.

I love putting myself in sink-or-swim situations. You realize the human spirit is built to survive.

I've never had a business plan. Every project we've ever done was the intersection of somebody with a real need, a real passion to do something, and hustling.