Eli Broad Quotes

Ask yourself two questions before you take on a risk: What do I have to lose? And what’s the worst that can happen?

The inability to delegate is one of the biggest problems I see with managers at all levels

So which one of you lost the bet?” Logan smiled broadly and cast a glance at Dom as color filled his cheeks. “Let’s just say the way we bet…we both come out winners.” I rolled my upper lip to keep from laughing and forced my eyes back to Sylvie. “Fair enough,” I said as a smile spread across my mouth. Yeah, Eli and I would have this. Nine years or ninety…it didn’t matter. We’d have it all. I’d make sure of it.

Eli King stands by the bar, nonchalantly leaning back, one hand nestling a drink and the other tucked in his pressed black trousers. He always wears something black. Like a gothic duke in a faraway castle. A step above Dracula and Satan’s favorite tutor. It fits with the sharp jawline, high cheekbones, and vile character. His crisp white shirt highlights his broad shoulders and lean, muscled frame. The cuffs are slightly rolled, revealing a Patek Philippe watch that’s so expensive, it could buy everyone in this club.

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein

Victory, as the old saying goes, has many fathers. People will flock to support you when you do well, but in the crucial early moments, and whenever you try to create something out of nothing, you will be on a solitary path blocked by obstacles and doubt.

People who have lived in shame and isolation need all the pride we can muster, not to mire ourselves in a narrowly defined identity politics, but to sustain broad-based rebellion. And likewise, we need a witness to all our histories, both collective and personal. Yet we also need to remember that witness and pride are not the same. Witness pairs grief and rage with remembrance. Pride pairs joy with a determination to be visible. Witness demands primary adherence to and respect for history. Pride uses history as one of its many tools. Sometimes witness and pride work in concert, other times not. We cannot afford to confuse, merge, blur the two.

Research and development conducted by private companies in the United States has grown enormously over the past four decades. We have substantially replaced the publicly funded science that drove our growth after World War II with private research efforts. Such private R&D has shown some impressive results, including high average returns for the corporate sector. However, despite their enormous impact, these private R&D investments are much too small from a broader perspective. This is not a criticism of any individuals; rather, it is simply a feature of the system. Private companies do not capture the spillovers that their R&D efforts create for other corporations, so private sector executives in established firms underinvest in invention. The venture capital industry, which provides admirable support to some start-ups, is focused on fast-impact industries, such as information technology, and not generally on longer-run and capital-intensive investments like clean energy or new cell and gene therapies. Leading entrepreneur-philanthropists get this. In recent years, there have been impressive investments in science funded by publicly minded individuals, including Eric Schmidt, Elon Musk, Paul Allen, Bill and Melinda Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bloomberg, Jon Meade Huntsman Sr., Eli and Edythe Broad, David H. Koch, Laurene Powell Jobs, and others (including numerous private foundations). The good news is that these people, with a wide variety of political views on other matters, share the assessment that science—including basic research—is of fundamental importance for the future of the United States. The less good news is that even the wealthiest people on the planet can barely move the needle relative to what the United States previously invested in science. America is, roughly speaking, a $20 trillion economy; 2 percent of our GDP is nearly $400 billion per year. Even the richest person in the world has a total stock of wealth of only around $100 billion—a mark broken in early 2018 by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in close pursuit. If the richest Americans put much of their wealth immediately into science, it would have some impact for a few years, but over the longer run, this would hardly move the needle. Publicly funded investment in research and development is the only “approach that could potentially return us to the days when technology-led growth lifted all boats. However, we should be careful. Private failure is not enough to justify government intervention. Just because the private sector is underinvesting does not necessarily imply that the government will make the right investments.

Matthew Peterson was in his sixties and the only hair he had left was wrapped around his head near his ears, leaving the top of his head a gleaming, polished orb. Peterson stood about 5’10”, a full five inches shorter than Eli's lanky frame. However, the head of security's broad shoulders and deep voice gave him a commanding presence. His temper was often short, and Eli preferred to avoid having it directed at him.