Quotes from Kenneth Langone

The essence of business to me is great people run great companies. Mediocre people don't do a very good job.

America has thrived on capitalism, and America will thrive again on capitalism.

I worked hard to get where I am. And I started with nothing.

As a little boy, my first job was delivering newspapers, and then I had a variety of different jobs. I worked in a butcher shop. I worked in a supermarket. I worked in construction. I dug ditches on the Long Island Expressway in 1954, 1955, 1956.

The biggest single challenge to America and our future is income inequality. We've got to fix it.

I have invested in companies. I have worked in companies. We have built companies; we have created jobs.

You only have to worry about going to jail if you break the law. That's pretty simple.

My first job was as a day laborer on the construction of the Long Island Expressway more than 50 years ago.

A little more than 30 years ago, Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, Pat Farrah and I got together and founded The Home Depot.

A lawsuit with no legal precedent, seeking no damages, from no jury, in the name of stopping something that isn't happening? Only in New York.

Dick Grasso would be a superb mayor of the City of New York. He loves the city.

We ought to look at Social Security. We ought to ask ourselves the question, is there inherently something wrong with Social Security that a man like me is eligible for Social Security? There's something wrong with the system.

I should not get Social Security. I think it's a travesty for a man of my success and of my means to get anything from the federal government.

Why do we have U.S. attorneys? Because we need a mechanism to make sure people obey the laws that we pass, for societal reasons.

A million dollars in the presidential election is a spit in the ocean. It's not a lot of money.

I learned playing poker that you never count your winnings because that's when you start to lose.

I don't need a job. I don't want an appointment. I don't want to be on a commission. I don't want to be ambassador to nowhere.

I'm nuts, I'm rich, and boy, do I love a fight!

Buy a stock at two, have it go to 30. You feel like you're on top of the world.

I'm a stockholder. I own a lot of stocks.

Genes don't mean necessarily that you have got a certain strand of gene that makes you particularly acceptable as a public official.

Rich people in one country don't act the same as rich people in another country.

My own feeling on the consumer is that he - he or she looks at what it costs them to pay their bills every month as opposed to how much debt they have.

You want to close the income inequality gap in part? Give us better educated kids out of high school. Give us kids that can challenge and succeed in the challenge with technology. You give us those kinds of kids, and watch the needle move.