Richard Edelman Quotes

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

I'm not going to run my business on the basis of quarterly numbers.

Uncertainty is a permanent part of the leadership landscape. It never goes away.

I'd say that, to be a good deal maker, you have to have 3 basic characteristics - timing, timing, and timing.

A president, like a college freshman, can't know in advance which questions he'll have to answer or what topics he'll have to master. He has to be flexible, supple, and responsive. He has to be comfortable with multiple-choice.

Nobody has a crystal ball, and part of evolving a business plan is to say, 'I might have said we're going left, but I see the opportunity and we're going right.'

For the past few years, I've been more selective than I have any right to be, but I think that's finally starting to work in my favor. I think I get way too much credit for making what people consider to be smart choices, but it's only because I made a decision to stop worrying about making money.

What an entrepreneur does is to build for the long run. If the market is great, you get all of the resources you can. You build to it. But a good entrepreneur is always prepared to throttle back, put on the brakes, and if the world changes, adapt to the world.

I was obliged to take tough, painful and bold decisions to ensure a manageable tomorrow.

I don't believe in careers. I believe in work. I'm not interested in some 'big picture that would be really good for me'.

In order to have your short term policies accepted, you have to have your long term policies understood.

Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping their outcomes towards success or failure: long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values.

In business, I think the most important thing is to position yourself for long-term and not be too impatient, which I am by nature, and I have to control myself.

With poker, you have a resolution of the hand within a couple of minutes. Whereas, even if the thought process in investing is very much the same, you're looking at an outcome that could be 2, 3, 4, 5 years from when you make the original decision. And the mindset related to that is very different.

Strategy is, at some level, the ability to predict what's going to happen, but it's also about understanding the context in which it is being formulated. And then you have to be open-minded to the fact that you're not going to get it right at the very beginning.

There is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if there's one thing I've learned throughout my work in finance, government, and conservation, it is to act before problems become too big to manage.

Don't let the ball hit you. Catch it or get out of the way. And if you get out of the way, that's when you have to stop playing.

My experience in government is there is a whole host of unintended consequences you have to think through. I can't un-know that, I find it harder now to offer simple solutions.

I understand that fans think short-term, and there's nothing wrong with that. You live or you die in the short term. But I believe in our system, and when you do that, you don't make knee-jerk decisions.

At the end of the day, you want to do what's best for your organization, present and future.

If the short-term decisions you make damage the long term, you should resist those. But there are many short-term decisions that you need to make to be a successful manager.

One of many strengths that I often see in successful women on Wall Street is a responsible balance between risk taking and risk mitigation - the ability to assess situations smartly and make the right medium-to-long-term decisions without being lured into reckless, short-term profit-taking.

History rewards those who can change their minds when the stakes are high.

I like to read the situation and play accordingly.

Whenever you're at a poker table - and you're betting all of your chips - you're worried, you're scared. Is it the right play? Have I thought through all the angles? That's what stinks about life and business in general. If I had to calculate 100% certainty on every deal I did, I literally would do zero deals.