This rise of the new global mega-rich is happening as established institutions are falling. The fall runs the gamut from the music business and traditional media to the Detroit automakers who find themselves obsolete, outmaneuvered, and out-priced by entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Mumbai, Shanghai, and even Siberia.

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.

The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.

Many entrepreneurs do not realize that many of the problems their businesses face today began yesterday, long before there was a business.

Of all the inventions of humans, the computer is going to rank near or at the top as history unfolds and we look back. It is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented. I feel incredibly lucky to be at exactly the right place in Silicon Valley, at exactly the right time, historically, where this invention has taken form.

In this digital age, it doesn’t really matter if you are in Canary Wharf or the Caribbean; there are opportunities waiting to be grasped by entrepreneurs.

My pride fell with my fortunes.

Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.

The once all-powerful ruler of Iraq was found in a hole, and now sits in a prison cell.

By that sin fell the angels.

I happened to come along in the music business when there was no trend.

Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure – the law firms, the real estate, all that – that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups.

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It’s the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.

I saw what happened when a dictator was allowed to take over a piece of a country and the country went down the tubes. And I saw the opposite during the war when America joined the fight.

On the way back from Mumbai to go meet with President Xi in China, I stopped in Singapore to meet with a guy named Lee Kuan Yew, who most foreign policy experts around the world say is the wisest man in the Orient.

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

California has a special relationship with the Internet. Many of the core technologies that power the Internet were invented here. Many of the most successful online entrepreneurs and content creators – in business, the arts, and countless other endeavors – got their start here.

It all went wrong with football, the thing I loved most of all, and from there, my life slowly fell apart.

I remember flying in, driving down 101 in a cab, and passing by all these tech companies like Yahoo! I remember thinking, ‚Maybe someday we’ll build a company. This probably isn’t it, but one day we will.‘

At the height of the Enron mania, the company’s market value was $65 billion. Once the dust cleared, the final value was $0.

Entrepreneurs are natural problem-solvers, which means that we always have ideas for new businesses popping into our heads. Having a lot of options is great, but sometimes it can be hard to focus on one when you are keen to move onto the next.

Most small-business owners have no financial education when they started. They weren’t trained to be entrepreneurs.

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That’s not a guess, it’s a guarantee. With pride, it’s not a matter of ‚if‘ we will fall, but ‚when.‘ There are no exceptions.

All empires come to an end, and the American one is no exception.

There’s no better place in the world for technology start-ups than Silicon Valley; there’s such an incredible well of talent and capital and resources. The whole system is set up to foster the creation of new companies.

If we could do high-speed rail in California just half a notch above what they’ve done on the Shanghai line in China, and if we had a straight path from L.A. to San Francisco, as well as the milk run, at least that would be progress.

In this age, I don’t care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are: if you cannot create harmony – even vicious harmony – on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete.

China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.

I love trying out different cuisines. In Delhi, I love Megu at the Leela, and TK’s at the Hyatt. I also enjoy Khan Chacha’s rolls. In Mumbai, it’s Royal China and Shiro. And in Bangalore, I like the food at Bricklane.

I’m a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.

When President Obama speaks about raising taxes on the rich, he speaks about high-income employees and small business owners, not entrepreneurs who build big businesses.

The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.

The idea that there is one kind of African is, of course, ridiculous. Sometimes African entrepreneurs want to kill you because you are saying public health is the priority, not roads. Of course they are right to press for that issue, but so are we right, I believe, to argue, for example, that millions of children could and should be vaccinated.

My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There’s a lot of that in Silicon Valley.

I would say raising capital is one of the weakest things for most entrepreneurs.