Kenneth Langone Quotations

A little more than 30 years ago, Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, Pat Farrah and I got together and founded The Home Depot.

A lawsuit with no legal precedent, seeking no damages, from no jury, in the name of stopping something that isn't happening? Only in New York.

A million dollars in the presidential election is a spit in the ocean. It's not a lot of money.

America has thrived on capitalism, and America will thrive again on capitalism.

Buy a stock at two, have it go to 30. You feel like you're on top of the world.

Dick Grasso would be a superb mayor of the City of New York. He loves the city.

Genes don't mean necessarily that you have got a certain strand of gene that makes you particularly acceptable as a public official.

Home Depot has never hired one human being for minimum wage, not one. We have always paid a premium over minimum wage.

I consider myself a significant supporter of any candidate I work for, and I am certainly generous, I think, with my own funds.

I don't need a job. I don't want an appointment. I don't want to be on a commission. I don't want to be ambassador to nowhere.

I don't really know and I don't care what I'm worth.

I have invested in companies. I have worked in companies. We have built companies; we have created jobs.

I have, never, ever once, ever gotten anything from any politician I've ever helped. Not one thing.

I learned playing poker that you never count your winnings because that's when you start to lose.

I should not get Social Security. I think it's a travesty for a man of my success and of my means to get anything from the federal government.

I think I should pay more taxes... but everything they take from me should go to reduce the debt.

I worked hard to get where I am. And I started with nothing.

I'm a stockholder. I own a lot of stocks.

I'm nuts, I'm rich, and boy, do I love a fight!

If we can get everybody working or as many as we can, you would be amazed at how many of our problems will disintegrate, go away.

My connection was we never want to put ourselves in a position as a nation where we pit group against group.

My first job was as a day laborer on the construction of the Long Island Expressway more than 50 years ago.

Rich people in one country don't act the same as rich people in another country.

Ronald Reagan would never go into the Oval Office without his jacket on - that's how much he revered the presidency.

When then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued me in 2003 over my stewardship as a director of the New York Stock Exchange, the NYSE's legal expenses were more than $100 million, which made it perhaps the priciest litigation in the state's history.

I don't know whether other people should or shouldn't pay taxes. I know I can, and I am willing, to pay more taxes. I know I should not get Social Security. I don't need it.

I have been in Wall Street all of my life. I love it. It has been good to me. I know many wonderful, decent, honorable, ethical, hard-working people that were in Wall Street with me.

We took the position we wanted our people to be better than minimum wage, so we're going to pay better than minimum wage, and we still do that.

People making $1 million a year are not going to do anything different if they pay more taxes.

My own feeling on the consumer is that he - he or she looks at what it costs them to pay their bills every month as opposed to how much debt they have.

You can have a phenomenal technology with bad people; you're not gonna have much success. You can have mediocre technology with great people; they'll figure out a way to make a buck.

We need to understand as a nation that you can't forever expect somebody out there, whether it's China or somebody in England, to say, 'I will always take America's debt no matter what.'

When a New York attorney general brings a lawsuit against a prominent business person, there are two things you can count on out of that office - lots of political bluster and little accountability.

We ought to look at Social Security. We ought to ask ourselves the question, is there inherently something wrong with Social Security that a man like me is eligible for Social Security? There's something wrong with the system.

Why do we have U.S. attorneys? Because we need a mechanism to make sure people obey the laws that we pass, for societal reasons.

We had 90 percent taxes before in America. All right? Didn't work.

Contrary to what you might assume, I didn't start with any advantages and neither did most of the successful people I know. I am the grandson of immigrants who came to this country seeking basic economic and personal liberty.

The thing that Tea Parties have to understand, you can't govern if you don't get elected.

As a little boy, my first job was delivering newspapers, and then I had a variety of different jobs. I worked in a butcher shop. I worked in a supermarket. I worked in construction. I dug ditches on the Long Island Expressway in 1954, 1955, 1956.

You only have to worry about going to jail if you break the law. That's pretty simple.

The wealth that was created by my investments wasn't put into a giant swimming pool as so many elected demagogues seem to imagine. Instead it benefitted our employees, their families and our community at large.

America is a powerful country. America is a great country. We have enormous resiliency. Any time we have had our back to the wall, we have come out a winner.

The biggest single challenge to America and our future is income inequality. We've got to fix it.

Nothing so enchants attorneys general, their eyes generally fixed on higher public office, as slinging accusations against successful financial executives. Preening press conferences and fawning media coverage are virtually guaranteed, whether or not the charges have substance.

I decided I was going to go to Wall Street, and I was introduced to some people... I met a guy who knew a bond trader at Pressprich, and he got me to meet him and the guy that ran their sales department, Jack Collin.

You can't run your career on the basis of what someone else does.

The essence of business to me is great people run great companies. Mediocre people don't do a very good job.

You want to close the income inequality gap in part? Give us better educated kids out of high school. Give us kids that can challenge and succeed in the challenge with technology. You give us those kinds of kids, and watch the needle move.

The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful gesture.