Self-Made Millionaire Quotes

There's people who I admire like... Dr. Dre, Puff Daddy, Master P, people who built their stuff and are still going.

I came to the country [U.S] without speaking a word of English, without a penny, worked full time, 40 hours a week, went to school full time, opened my own small business, ended up being a multi-millionaire. If I can do it, without even knowing the language, anybody can do it. All it takes is determination, perseverance, and like Winston Churchill said: 'Never, never, never, never give up.'"

My father built a small business from scratch with years and years of sweat equity and many, many weeks away from home. He employed about 50 people, and by the end of his working years, the business was highly successful. He became a millionaire.

Through the years, Madam Walker has certainly become a staple of anything that has to do with black history, women's history and entrepreneurship.

The saying was that Madam Walker made the money, and her daughter - my great-grandmother - spent it.

People don't understand this, but I started very young, and I became very, very successful at a very young age. By the time I was 26 years old, I was a multimillionaire. And I started with nothing. And I was on the road 10, 11 months a year.

Unfortunately I have no rags-to-riches story to tell. Money never played a big role for me. My parents just had it.

Many people have told me that once they learn of Madam Walker's accomplishments they are surprised, even embarrassed, that they have never heard of her. But they shouldn't be. Her extraordinary story was simply omitted from the history books.

A lot of people think Oprah is channeling for Madam Walker, and there are lots of parallels.

For many years Madam Walker was just a little footnote in history. As a woman who made haircare products, she was really consigned to something trivial.

I hope that people will be inspired by Madam Walker's story. I hope that they will see her as a complex human being, and that they will want to dig more deeply, that they will want to know the details of her life.

You can say that Mitt Romney started with nothing! He didn't get an inheritance from his dad.

There is a core of people who know and love Madam C.J. Walker, but there's a much larger audience who don't really know about her. I think 'Self Made' will give people a window into her life.

It's kind of a crazy thing to decide that you're going to be worth tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars and set out to do that. It doesn't suit everybody.

My uncle was the first brown person to have a market stall on Petticoat Lane in the 1960s. He worked his way up from the street. He was homeless, but eventually he got a car so he could sell from the boot. And by the 1980s, he was a millionaire wholesaling to companies like Topshop. So in a way, fashion put me in England.

As one of the pioneers of modern hair care and cosmetics, Madam Walker is still an inspiration to a lot of people going into the business.

I've found that once people are introduced to Madam Walker's story, they are inspired but also perplexed about why she was omitted from their history lessons.

The real Annie Malone was not a light-skinned woman.

Madame Walker was mythologized like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but I want to show that she was fabulous on her own.

But the fascinating and unbelievable-but-true thing about Dr. Jefferson Jeffersonis that he was not a doctor of any kind. He was just an orange juice salesman named Jefferson Jefferson. When he became rich and powerful, he went to court, made "Jefferson" his middle name, and then changed his first name to "Dr." Capital D. Lowercase r. Period.

There's no one more obnoxious and self-righteous than the self-made man. And no one more admirable.