I always felt uncomfortable with real estate because buildings don't move, and neighborhoods change.
— Stephen A. Schwarzman
Business is usually a team sport. There isn't one great person sitting there directing things. You can't run an effective business like that.
Sometimes, success in life is knowing one's limitations.
Sleeping at night is not a specialty of entrepreneurs. The entrepreneur who is sleeping soundly, something bad is happening to that person; they just don't know it's happening yet.
Blackstone is not really a business per se. It's a mission to be the best.
I chose to start Schwarzman Scholars because I saw the potential for the world to become focused and unhappy with China, in large part because of the populism that was growing throughout the world.
I'm a consistent little person.
I didn't get to be successful by letting people hurt Blackstone or me.
The concept of fair value accounting is correct and useful, but the application during periods of crisis is problematic. It's another one of those unintended consequences of making a rule that's supposed to be good that turns out the other way.
Paid leave is worth every penny.
Some of the people in finance touch enormous parts of the economy.
Being reasonably direct about what you're doing, being comfortable, is the best way to do things.
What you find when you live in the United States, you live in the West, is that when somebody fails, it's never their fault. They always like to blame somebody other than themselves for a failure.
Next to my mom, I'm actually a shrinking violet.
Most youth are lacking critical life skills that make them employable and, most importantly, able to keep a job - things like teamwork, decision-making, and time management.
It's a great privilege to be asked to help the country - even if it occasionally comes with some degree of criticism.
Live life intensely - I've always believed in that.
I'm pretty good on my feet. I'm pretty decent at bobbing and weaving, but there's only so long you can bob and weave when you don't have a good base.
The language skill in the U.S. for the most part has been awful. Many Americans don't learn any foreign language.
I like things with upside. That's how you make money.
Doing a me-too business, because it's you - the only person who cares about that is you. The market doesn't care if it's you. The market is pretty much being served. You better have something that the world doesn't have, because even then, you might screw it up through your own ineptitude and inexperience.
It's important that we educate Americans about how hedge funds and private equity play completely different roles.
I love things that cost nothing that have great results.
I didn't want to be a retailer. I hated to wait on people.
When deals go wrong, you have no one else to blame, so you yell at yourself, and you yell at others.
In a financial crisis, only the Fed, as the lender of last resort, might stand between our economy and financial catastrophe. We must leave the Fed with the flexibility to provide liquidity in order to stop a financial panic.
You can't grow unless your banking system is expanding and you are extending credit.
When I was much younger, I realized that when I was handling something very large, and I was on my own doing that, that my breathing rate would increase, and that would affect my ability to think as well as I normally would. So when that starts happening, I slow down.
Deals really have to do with the overlap of what one side wants and the other side wants, and it's really just the discovery of where that overlap is and how you decide to get there.
The Schwarzman Scholars is a program that was designed with Tsinghua University. They asked me to do something in honor of their 100th anniversary.
Education around entrepreneurship should start early, at secondary level, and be very robust by college level.
Preparing youth for employment requires training that is demand-driven to meet the needs of companies and ensure that young people are taught marketable skills.
Public service is a core value for people of my generation.
We have limited time, and we have to maximize it.
I was in an interdisciplinary major - which was a new thing then - which was psychology, sociology, anthropology, and biology, which is really sort of the study of the human being.
China on the world stage, in terms of interaction with the rest of the world, has been relatively very new due to the long isolation period until Deng Xiaoping's times.
To the extent that I can add value and make my country a better place, that's a good thing to do.
The biggest mistake I've seen people make with their careers is, when they're good, after two or three years - and they happen to be smart - they announce that they're going out to start their own firm.
When society starts moving in a way that becomes very negative, whether it's in the West or any other place, I've always found that it's very useful to have people around who actually know what's happening.
In the Catholic schools, they spend much less money than the public schools, and they get amazing results. Private schools spend much more money than the public schools, and they get remarkable results.
I have no first-strike capability. I never choose to go into battle first. But I won't back down.
I'm doing my sit-ups and watching CNBC. Suddenly, somebody starts talking about me on television... The business has gone into a weird zone of visibility. For those of us who have done it for a long time, it's strange.
Dodd-Frank has disproportionately burdened community banks, despite their having no role in the financial crisis.
Markets tend to always overshoot when they get really ebullient.
Always, always make good on what you say.
China is an indomitable force, and they have a commitment for excellence.
There are no patents in finance.
We need to be able to identify and support young people who demonstrate interest and aptitude in entrepreneurship and business creation and give them tools to follow this path throughout their educational experience.
We're so overregulated as a country that we just crushed our productivity.
Part of China's strategic planning is to make their universities among the top level of the world, and I think they understand you can't do that without the adoption of some of the principles of the great universities in the West; one of those is the ability to have free expression and discussion in the classroom.
