Chamath Palihapitiya Quotes

I'm raised by a single mom and didn't have pops around for the most part of my life. And she, by any means necessary, gave me the best opportunities that she knew how to give me.

You know the things I went through as a youngster, coming into the business, all the good, the bad and the ugly that came. I'd had a rough life. I grew up single parent. My mom, she was like a father to me.

My father left... but I tell my mom - and I told my mom this when I was a kid - I said, 'You know what, Mom? Good thing he left because you're a strong woman.'

My mom raised six kids on her own.

My mom raised us three boys by herself on welfare. It's not worse than anybody else's life.

My mom grew up in poverty in Oklahoma - like Dust Bowl, nine people in one room kind of place - and the way she got out of poverty was through education. My dad grew up without a dad, with very little and he also made his way out through education.

I love any book that makes my family seem almost normal.

A lot of times when people become successful, people don't really understand what they had to do or the sacrifices they made to do that, or they assume that they had money. This is coming from, like, a kid who was broke and lived with roaches and a single mom in Dorchester.

For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you'd would wake up times and hope that the next day you'd be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.

My mother is a special story. She went through so much to bring us up, four men at home, especially when our country was going through really difficult times.

When I was about five or seven years old my mother was placed in a mental institution and so we were with our father who worked very hard, and we had to figure a lot of things out.

To say that a family is happy I think is to diminish it, taking out what is interesting. Growing up, I don't think my family was any happier or unhappier than anyone else's. My mother and father should have been divorced or never even married. On the other hand, I remember many moments of happiness.

My father died when I was seven, leaving a widow and five sons, ranging in age from five to seventeen. My mother was the most highly-disciplined and hardest working person I have ever known, and this, combined with her love and gentleness, enabled her to make a success of each of her children.

I am grateful for the lessons I learned from my parents' sacrifices. They often had trouble making ends meet, so we moved for them to find work. I remember my mom would sometimes take on second jobs, like ironing, just so we could buy groceries.

My father was in and out of jail throughout my childhood. He really wasn't in my life at all. Thankfully, I had two strong role models who guided me through those years.

I'm an only child raised by a single mom. She's always been supportive of what I wanted to do.

When my father died, I was nine or 10, and my mother was like a dad and a mom to me. She raised me and supported me when I came to the U.S.

From a very young age, my dad did not have work, so mummy would look after the house. She would go and sing bhajans and do thumri performances to support the house.

It's a long story, my life, growing up with my dad, my mom when she died, everything. I had bad moments in my life, my dad going to prison, I had nothing, and that's where I got my motivation.

I grew up kind of rough, without very much. So, I just want to work as hard as I can so my kids won't have to go through what I did.

I've seen a lot in my life. My dad was pretty gnarly but I loved him and I wouldn't change it for the world. My mom's a survivor.

My deep emotional connection to my mother, a remarkable woman who made a hard choice to save her children, and who valiantly struggled to care for us as a single parent, is the current that has driven my entire life. Everything I've accomplished is a testament to her fortitude.

So much of life's dramas, good and bad, play out against family and so it's really inspiring for any number of stories in all the fields I write in.

My family is as complicated as the next family. We have our joys and our tragedies, and we bear both with a black humour that is in our genes.