Quotes from Kenneth Langone

You can't run your career on the basis of what someone else does.

We took the position we wanted our people to be better than minimum wage, so we're going to pay better than minimum wage, and we still do that.

Home Depot has never hired one human being for minimum wage, not one. We have always paid a premium over minimum wage.

Contrary to what you might assume, I didn't start with any advantages and neither did most of the successful people I know. I am the grandson of immigrants who came to this country seeking basic economic and personal liberty.

When then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued me in 2003 over my stewardship as a director of the New York Stock Exchange, the NYSE's legal expenses were more than $100 million, which made it perhaps the priciest litigation in the state's history.

You can have a phenomenal technology with bad people; you're not gonna have much success. You can have mediocre technology with great people; they'll figure out a way to make a buck.

My connection was we never want to put ourselves in a position as a nation where we pit group against group.

I decided I was going to go to Wall Street, and I was introduced to some people... I met a guy who knew a bond trader at Pressprich, and he got me to meet him and the guy that ran their sales department, Jack Collin.

I have been in Wall Street all of my life. I love it. It has been good to me. I know many wonderful, decent, honorable, ethical, hard-working people that were in Wall Street with me.

I consider myself a significant supporter of any candidate I work for, and I am certainly generous, I think, with my own funds.

The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful gesture.

The economy is a collection of emotions.

The wealth that was created by my investments wasn't put into a giant swimming pool as so many elected demagogues seem to imagine. Instead it benefitted our employees, their families and our community at large.

I have, never, ever once, ever gotten anything from any politician I've ever helped. Not one thing.

We need to understand as a nation that you can't forever expect somebody out there, whether it's China or somebody in England, to say, 'I will always take America's debt no matter what.'

We had 90 percent taxes before in America. All right? Didn't work.

People making $1 million a year are not going to do anything different if they pay more taxes.

I don't know whether other people should or shouldn't pay taxes. I know I can, and I am willing, to pay more taxes. I know I should not get Social Security. I don't need it.

I think I should pay more taxes... but everything they take from me should go to reduce the debt.

The thing that Tea Parties have to understand, you can't govern if you don't get elected.

When a New York attorney general brings a lawsuit against a prominent business person, there are two things you can count on out of that office - lots of political bluster and little accountability.

America is a powerful country. America is a great country. We have enormous resiliency. Any time we have had our back to the wall, we have come out a winner.

If we can get everybody working or as many as we can, you would be amazed at how many of our problems will disintegrate, go away.

Ronald Reagan would never go into the Oval Office without his jacket on - that's how much he revered the presidency.