George Gilder Quotes

If you're looking to become an entrepreneur then don't waste your time going to university or business school - just get on and do it.

A vision is something you see and others don't. Some people would say that's a pocket definition of lunacy. But it also defines entrepreneurial spirit.

In the information age, the richest people are entrepreneurs. We may not become a king or queen, but we can all be entrepreneurs.

Of course, you don't have to have a degree to be rich. You just have to have ideas. Maybe having a degree sets you back, for it stuffs you into tick-tock [the daily grind of work], and perhaps that stifles your creative mind. But the fact is that many millionaires have few educational qualifications of any kind at all. However, they still have knowledge. The difference is, they have knowledge they can sell, and others have the "common knowledge" of tick-tock, which isn't worth as much, if anything at all.

If Thomas Edison had gone to business school, we would all be reading by larger candles.

In order to succeed in business a man does not need a degree from a school of business administration. These schools train the subalterns for routine jobs. They certainly do not train entrepreneurs.

Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.

Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I've done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin's success. I am aware that the ideas of business as being fun and creative goes right against the grain of convention, and it's certainly not how the they teach it at some of those business schools, where business means hard grind and lots of 'discounted cash flows' and net' present values'.

People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs.

In a lot of ways, it's not the money that allows you to do new things. It's the growth and the ability to find things that people want and to use your creativity to target those.

The problem with most failing businesses is not that their owners don?t know enough about finance, marketing, management, and operations - they don?t, but those things are easy enough to learn - but that they spend their time and energy defending what they think they know. My experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren?t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.

The world is always changed by people who don't listen to conventional wisdom. I think we often set our goals too small and try to accomplish them too quickly.

Because it's so empowering, I want people to think about being entrepreneurial regardless. They don't have to start companies, but that's what makes them great employees, that's what makes them great citizens.

There is never a bad time to start a business - unless you want to start a mediocre one.

Creativity is the most practical thing a businessman can employ.

Society flourishes when people think entrepreneurally.

Wealth is in applications of mind to nature; and the art of getting rich consists not in industry, much less in saving, but in a better order, in timeliness, in being at the right spot.

Even if you have no interest in starting a company, having the experience of having ideas and doing them, that's muscle to exercise because that's what people are going to want to see. That's what makes you different.

For entrepreneurs, ignorance is not bliss. It's fatal. It's costly. And it's for losers. You either get organized, or get crushed.

People are out there looking for jobs and realizing that they have to look within to do and create what the new and next thing will be. They can't rely anymore on what was usually given to them.

It is true that there is a fine line between entrepreneurship and insanity. Crazy people see and feel things that others don't. But you have to believe that everything is possible. If you believe it, those around you will believe it too.

Building a business is not rocket science, it's about having a great idea and seeing it through with integrity.

It's the combination: big idea with a good entrepreneur: there's nothing more powerful. That's just as true [for] education and human rights as it is for hotel or steels.

There are three kinds of people: 1. Innovators. 2. Imitators. 3. Idiots.

One key to entrepreneurial success is to get a great group of people around you who believe in your idea.