Hobart Alter Quotes

I think the most important trait for an entrepreneur is persistence. When you try to do something new and difficult, you are more likely to fail than to succeed.

It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands, new undertakings, and new forms of expression.

I'm an optimist. You can't be an entrepreneur if you're not essentially an optimist, so I'm an optimist by nature.

When I started Go Daddy, I tried many things - like building networks and selling education - and none of it panned out. I lost millions of dollars the first couple of years. I made a lot of wrong turns, but that's the process of being successful in business.

I nearly failed when Virgin was in its infancy; I nearly failed in the early 1980s, and, of course, I have nearly died more than once trying to achieve a world record for boating or ballooning. But through a combination of luck and planning, both Virgin and I are still here.

Remember, I'm someone who got fired from Disney and eight days later started the first studio in 65 years with two of the most brilliant, successful people in the history of the entertainment business, doing something everyone said was somewhere between improbable and impossible. I'm afraid that's exactly what I love doing.

Don't let people make you afraid of taking chances in life. And if you fail, it's no big deal. Get back up and fight through it and be successful again. If you did it once, you can do it again.

What's the worst that can happen? If it doesn't do well I can put on my big girl panties, deal with it and move on.

It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.

If you're not big enough to lose, you're not big enough to win.

How important is failure - yes, failure - to the health of a thriving, innovative business? So important that Ratan Tata, chairman of India's largest corporation, gives an annual award to the employee who comes up with the best idea that failed.

Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.

Give me an entrepreneur with a lot of courage, gusto and who iterates rapidly, and I will back that person day in and day out.

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.

If something's important enough, you should try. Even if you - the probable outcome is failure.

This is the paradox for me: in failure alone is there any possibility of success. I don't think I'm alone in this - nor do I think it's an attitude that only prevails among people whose work is obviously 'creative'.

I'd get kicked out of buildings all day long, people would rip up my business card in my face. It's a humbling business to be in. But I knew I could sell and I knew I wanted to sell something I had created. I cut the feet out of those pantyhose and I knew I was on to something. This was it.

I admire the courage and self-reliance it takes to start your own business and make it succeed.

But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain, to dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, and baffled, get up and begin again.

Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act.

Some of the best projects to ever come out of Atari or Chuck E. Cheese's were from high school dropouts, college dropouts. One guy had been in jail.

It's up to the courage of the filmmakers to make art in cinema, not just business. John was rejected by studios, he borrowed money and did movies with his own money. You're either courageous or not. You have to find a way.

Everyone should be commended for allowing people to make disasters, to make failures - you've just got to be sure that it's a magnificent failure and that, by creating a magnificent failure, you plant the seed.

Optimistic people play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are inventors, entrepreneurs, political and military leaders - not average people. They got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks.

There are people who say that you can't experiment... That condemns you to failure.