Bravery is not the absence of fear, it is overcoming it.
When I wanted the CEO of Starbucks to keep me in mind for their board, I sent him a note rather than calling. I call it dripping: You don't want to be like a faucet full-on; you want to drip just enough that they don't forget about you.
We don't prognosticate macroeconomic factors, we're looking at our companies from a bottom-up perspective on their long-run prospects of returning.
People can be sensitive, so if I need to, I'll suck it up and be more flowery. I'll do what it takes to get the outcome I want. As I like to say, sometimes you have to crouch to conquer.
I believe in civility, inclusion and diversity. I believe that everybody can contribute. I don't believe in labelling and stereotypes. These things are the antithesis of what I believe in and go against everything I love in America. And I do love America.
We talk about long-term patient investing, and that idea that slow and steady does win the race, that time can be your best friend when it comes to investing. That's why we have a turtle as a logo at Ariel.
Now, race is one of those topics in America that makes people extraordinarily uncomfortable. You bring it up at a dinner party or in a workplace environment, it is literally the conversational equivalent of touching the third rail.
The way I go about it is that we should all be inviting people into our lives who don't look like us, speak like us and don't come from where we come from.
Sometimes those apartments we lived in weren't finished, sometimes the rooms would be heated by the gas stove, sometimes we would heat our water on hot plates to take baths, and that was very sobering, especially as a child.
I'd like to see great textbooks, great opportunities for kids to really understand stock market investing, because at the end of the day, they are going to be all they have in terms of creating a life for themselves, a retirement account, and things like that.
In the spirit of debunking racial stereotypes, the one that black people don't like to swim, I'm going to tell you how much I love to swim. I love to swim so much that as an adult, I swim with a coach.
Being aware of challenges doesn't make them sting less, but once you see them, you can assess the best way to handle them.
Having a financially illiterate society is dangerous, and we have to do something about that.
When you feel house poor, you don't buy anything. Housing immediately impacts the job numbers because there are so many housing-related jobs within the industry, and in adjacent industries.
On my worst day I always tell myself I'm not in a field picking cotton.
As citizens, I'm asking you not to leave any child behind. I'm asking you not to be color blind, but to be color brave, so that every child knows that their future matters and their dreams are possible.
I've told stories about people coming to my office and giving me their coats and requesting that I hang them up and get coffee - which I dutifully do. And then I come in and sit at the head of the table. It's awkward.
People feel a great deal of their wealth or lack thereof in their home value. Despite the fact they're living there and not going to sell it per se, it does have a big psychological effect.
You can teach someone with basic smarts to be smarter; you can't teach cultural fit or personality. But you also want someone who has a passion to win; someone that is all in.
I take vitamins when I wake up. One of them I need to take is to wake up my brain. It has some caffeine in it, and it stimulates my brain and I'm literally not a person without it.
