Tom Golisano Quotations

Most people don't understand the Electoral College; they don't know why it exists.

My original business plan? To work hard, get 300 clients in the Rochester area, and live happily ever after.

I came up with the idea for what later became Paychex in 1970 when I was working for Electronic Accounting Systems, a company that sold payroll processing to companies with 50 to 1,000 employees.

We picked a great marketplace. We were a pioneer in payroll processing for very small companies. And we had the perseverance and good fortune enough to stick it out.

By the end of 1978, we had 11 partners and six franchisees, we were operating in 22 cities, and we had about 6,000 clients. We had left Electronic Accounting Systems and were doing our own processing on our own computers.

Electronic Accounting Systems processed my little payrolls like one big payroll. I did the selling, and the people I hired did most of the operations.

A lot of politicians say they want to get people out to vote; sometimes you can't totally believe they really want that.

Anyone who has been as successful as I have should want to share those resources. Why not give some of it to charity?

Baseball has been my favorite sport all my life.

From the day I got out of school, I was looking for an idea.

I'm not possessed about owning the Buffalo Bills, just as I wasn't possessed about owning the Buffalo Sabres.

If we go by the National Popular Vote, we'll get more people voting.

If you have fewer teenagers having children, they could focus more on their vocational development.

It struck me that most businesses have less than 100 employees, but most payroll services were going after bigger companies.

Like health care, education is something worth spending on and worth investing in, but we're spending more and getting less.

Politicians like to talk about incentives - for businesses to relocate, for example, or to get folks to buy local.

That's part of being an entrepreneur - you watch your pennies.

There are tremendous barriers to building housing. If we could break them down, the need for rent controls would go away.

I love New York. But how much should it cost to call New York home? Decades of out-of-control budgets, spending hikes, and relentless borrowing have made New York simply too expensive.

I've been paying a lot of money in state income taxes, and I've been happy to do it, but when this last thing happened, this 50 percent increase in the tax rate, it was just too much.

New York state and federal election laws allow us to make unlimited expenditures on behalf of or in opposition to candidates so long as we do not coordinate those expenditures.

The National Popular Vote is about getting states to convert from the winner-take-all rule. The states that pass the legislation will assign all their electoral votes to the candidate that got the most votes in the country, not just in the state.

What made me this way was watching my father go through bad employment experiences. When I was 17, and he was 65, I saw him go through the experiences working for a boss that was rude and obnoxious. I swore if I was ever had the capacity to run a company that I would do it in a different way.

If the Bills were ever in danger of leaving the community, I might inquire as to how I could help (keep them in Buffalo). But would I buy the team? I don't know.

I think the town was hungering for something like this. It's been a real kick to watch people rally around this team.

The state has turned us into a generation of gamblers.

Anything that imperils (the Bills') ability to stay here and be fruitful is a big concern. The community's got a big investment in the team mentally and I'd hate to have anything happen to that relationship.

That place has been rocking. You can really feel the energy of the fans. I can't think of any place I would rather be.

It's concerning to me. I'm very interested in the topic. How I would get involved is undetermined at this point.

I like the make-up of this team. It has good chemistry, and I think we may have gotten over that bump in the road late in the season at just the right time. I think we are heading into the playoffs in a good frame of mind.

In New York, the average total state and local tax burden is $5,260 for every man, woman and child. That's by far the highest in the country.