Lloyd Blankfein Quotes

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Lloyd Blankfein

Profession : Businessman

Birth : September 20, 1954

You can see that all these people who did really great things failed six times or didn't get going until they were much older. I think that's much more instructive and educational.

Lloyd Blankfein

To the extent I bloomed, I'm a late bloomer.

Lloyd Blankfein

In my own experience, I plotted and planned my life when I was getting out of law school to know by what year I'd make it to the Supreme Court. That didn't work out the way I planned.

Lloyd Blankfein

There is a line in which populism can cross over into demagoguery. Demagoguery is the crossover where populism becomes a bad thing, and people make things up, and they assign responsibilities that aren't fair and justified, and scapegoat communities. And then it becomes a very bad thing.

Lloyd Blankfein

If you do something really well, the entire world beats a path to your door. The number three, number five, number 400 player gets nothing. It's almost a winner take all.

Lloyd Blankfein

Mysterious can be cool, if you're in Hollywood and everyone's happy. But it can be really bad if people perceive that the financial interests are adversarial, that there's money versus people. A lot of Goldman Sachs people went into government, so at a time when there's a distrust of institutions, some of that reflects on us.

Lloyd Blankfein

I am specifically concerned about the idea that the legislative process is one that gets characterized the way it is as the 'fiscal cliff.' At the end of the day, the United States is the biggest economy in the world, and the dollar is the reserve currency in the world. I think it behooves us to act in a much more responsible way.

Lloyd Blankfein

I started out as a lawyer and came in laterally to Goldman Sachs. So I learned myself that life is unpredictable. That you really should, in terms of your career, try to be excellent at what you're doing. I think if you focus on your job, and you focus on being broad in the context of your job, the next jobs follow from that.

Lloyd Blankfein

We've had this program for a number of years now, called 10,000 Small Businesses, where Goldman Sachs has convened a group of partners to basically give business education to small business owners.

Lloyd Blankfein

Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It's a virtuous cycle.

Lloyd Blankfein

I don't look forward to a time when every politician, every legislator goes to Washington absolutely committed to an extreme point of view. Elected representatives are sent to Washington to compromise, not to never compromise.

Lloyd Blankfein

Ambition is your inner voice that tells you you can and should strive to go beyond your circumstances or station in life.

Lloyd Blankfein

I've learned over the years that there's a lot of things that work out pretty well that I don't love.

Lloyd Blankfein

In markets, there are times when you are looking for what makes sense. At other times, you are looking for what you can do that is sensible versus constraints and uncertainties.

Lloyd Blankfein

Growth requires risk-taking. If you want to dampen risk and make sure you never have a problem, you do so, but that also will have an effect on growth. This is a decision that doesn't necessarily belong to financial institutions. It belongs to regulators and legislators who represent the body politic.

Lloyd Blankfein

There is a tradition in America of people in business not only commenting on the way the government is being run but doing something about it if they don't like it. In fact, they don't just rail about it: they go into government, like some of my ex-colleagues.

Lloyd Blankfein

Businesses will ultimately go where the markets and opportunities are.

Lloyd Blankfein

The U.S. is not pure capitalism. In fact, there's no place for pure capitalism, unregulated capitalism. We have a regulated system.

Lloyd Blankfein

I always thought that a prep school was what some people went to after high school to prepare themselves for college.

Lloyd Blankfein

The best traders are not right more than they are wrong. They are quick adjusters. They are better at getting right when they are wrong.

Lloyd Blankfein