John Jacob Astor Quotes

If somebody told me you'd be a one and a half billion dollar company and be the largest in the world, I wouldn't have believed it myself.

I started with shoes, and with hard work and discipline, the business prospered.

I've never met a successful person in any walk of life - from Michael Dell to Peyton Manning to Barack Obama - that when you ask that person, 'Hey, how did you get here, and what was your road like?' They say, 'You know what? It was really easy. I slept in all the time, turned my papers in late, didn't pay attention to people and my surroundings.'

I don't think there is any player who has everything coming easy, you know?

I am confident the SCMP and Hong Kong will continue to grow and prosper, hand in hand, in this 21st century of opportunity.

When you work for something it will eventually happen and it will be lasting, whereas when things are easy they do not always hold the same value.

In 1992, we did $1.1 billion in revenues. In the first nine months of 1993, we did just under $1.2 billion.

I work so hard, but... everything just goes my way! It's insane!

The two misconceptions of me are I didn't work hard, and that everything I made it look easy.

An embedded growth obligation is how fast a structure has to grow in order to maintain its honest positions.

When I came to the NFL, I was just trying to make the team.

We've dreamed of growing our company into something like Richard Childress has. We're working really hard, and we're getting more competitive. Hopefully, that becomes a reality.

KIND has gone through many iterations as it deepens its social impact. When you're selling a million dollars a year, the impact you can have is very different than when you are selling over a billion dollars a year. Scale has allowed us to do things we never thought possible.

Keeping your head down and doing the best job you can in the beginning gives you the opportunity to be evaluated on the basis of the contributions you are making. [Then], when you feel strongly about your work or about a position, you'll be given more attention [than] if you hadn't done that constantly.

Getting a project started is like moving a ship. It takes a lot of energy to build up momentum.

And I can just see that sometimes the technique is blasting powder rather than steady struggle.

The first billion is a helluva lot harder.

There is too much economic growth not happening that needs to be jump-started. There are too many jobs to be created, and there's too much wealth waiting to be created. If that got going, there'd be no stopping Trump; I don't care what the Democrats think they've got on any of this collusion with the Russians 'cause there's nothing there.

Momentum and growth are the lifeblood of startups. This is probably in the top three secrets of executing well.

Men do their hardest work at the bottom of the ladder, not at the top.

I started off in Brooklyn, New York, with a small loan and built a business that today is worth well over $10 billion.

Lives of great men all remind us greatness takes no easy way.

Everything that is now easy for you was once hard in the beginning

I started with shoes, and with hard work and discipline, the business prospered. I moved to the department store business and again, things went well.

When you think that it's too hard, remember that in the long run, doing the things that will make you successful is a lot easier than being unsuccessful