Ursula Burns Quotations

The world is full of opportunities - every day there's something new that you can do. For example, you could make dirty water potable. Why does anyone not have potable water? Because it's a problem that hasn't been solved yet, but it can be.

I'm less concerned about whether being a good corporate citizen burnishes a company's reputation. That's just an added benefit. I believe it's a responsibility, and there is no negotiating on responsibilities.

Unlike people, companies outlive their founders and their leaders.

Kids are pretty resilient. You don't have to be at every volleyball game. We can't guilt ourselves.

My mother was amazing. I guess, in our community, if you wanted to get by you had to work hard. So she cleaned offices. She did everything that you could imagine. We were really poor. But she would say, 'Where you are is not who you are.'

Long time ago, people would make the Bible, right? The guy said it, somebody wrote it down. And then if you wanted another copy of it, another human being wrote another one. It took a long, long time. Somebody created this thing called mimeograph paper and so you said, 'OK, we'll do it that way.' And so you could get three of them.

Race and gender definitely came up, occasionally, in my life at work. But the bigger challenge that I had was age. I took roles earlier in my career than people expected, and so a lot of what I got was, 'Do you actually know enough to do this?'

I don't want to overemphasize this, but not a day goes by when I don't think about my mother and what she would think about what I just did. I often adjust my approach.

My mother was pragmatic, focused and extremely, exceedingly practical, and she was the ultimate self-determining person.

If you go to Norway, Finland, Russia or Australia, youll see Xerox or Fuji-Xerox people, not just the name on the door. We have human beings who live and work and serve customers everywhere around the globe.