Quotes on Capital

There's nothing wrong with raising venture capital. Many lean startups are ambitious and are able to deploy large amounts of capital. What differentiates them is their disciplined approach to determining when to spend money: after the fundamental elements of the business model have been empirically validated.

In the ideal world, philanthropy should be redundant or at least it should be at the edges, as innovation or risk capital. But it's far from an ideal world; the wealthy are cornering more and more opportunities and resources from this planet. So, the big challenge for philanthropy is... can it engage with the distribution of wealth itself?

Tax laws favor capital over labor, giving capital gains a lower rate than ordinary income. The rich get humongous mortgage interest deductions while renters get no deduction at all.

I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book - in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention.

Why do we fully tax some kinds of income from capital, like interest and dividends; partially tax other kinds like capital gains; defer tax on other kinds, like IRAs; and impose no tax at all on still other types of capital income, like interest on municipal bonds? This simply is not rational. These distinctions don't have any inherent logic.

I've always been fascinated with the stealing of innocence. It's the most heinous crime, and certainly a capital crime if there ever was one.

To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.

Empowering innovations require long-term investments, which tie up capital for years and years. So companies are using capital to create more capital, and consequently, the world is awash in capital, but the innovations we need to advance aren't there.

Virality, at its core, is asking someone to spend their social capital recommending or linking or posting about you for free.

In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices.

The financial doctrines so zealously followed by American companies might help optimize capital when it is scarce. But capital is abundant. If we are to see our economy really grow, we need to encourage migratory capital to become productive capital - capital invested for the long-term in empowering innovations.

I succeeded at venture capital because, for years, I rarely thought about or spent time on anything else. Anything less than that unmitigated full commitment leaves me feeling frustrated and ineffective.

Money is not capital in most of the developing countries. It's just cash. Because it lacks the institutional, organizational, managerial forms to turn it into capital.

Talent is a by-product of education; the quality of a country's human capital depends on it.

What we are doing is, rather than living on the interest of our basic biological capital, we're using up our capital, so we're dipping into our capital. We're using up what should be our children's and grandchildren's legacy.

You will always need more capital than you think, because it will always take you longer to reach profitability than you can imagine.

All countries will eventually need to rebuild their growth models around digital technologies and the human capital that supports their deployment and expansion.

We all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We're in a relay race, relying on the financial and human capital of our parents and grandparents. Blacks were shackled for the early part of that relay race, and although many of the fetters have come off, whites have developed a huge lead.

Economic growth is the aggregate effect of the quest to accumulate capital and extract profit. Capitalism collapses without growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity.

You go to any MBA program, and you will be taught the theory of the firm, that the purpose of the firm is the maximization of return on invested capital. I always thought this was a kind of lunacy.

Living in a capital in Europe but still surrounded by mountains and ocean, my relationship to music was strongest walking to school and back. I would sing to myself and very quickly started mapping out my melodies to landscapes - at the time I just thought it was very matter of fact, a common thing to do.