Donald J. Trump · 384 pages
Rating: (11.6K votes)
“I've read hundreds of books about China over the decades. I know the Chinese. I've made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind.”
“One of the problems when you become successful is that jealousy and envy inevitably follow. There are people—I categorize them as life’s losers—who get their sense of accomplishment and achievement from trying to stop others. As far as I’m concerned, if they had any real ability they wouldn’t be fighting me, they’d be doing something constructive themselves.”
“good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.”
“I’ve always felt that a lot of modern art is a con, and that the most successful painters are often better salesmen and promoters than they are artists.”
“And if it can’t be fun, what’s the point?”
“I discovered, for the first time but not the last, that politicians don’t care too much what things cost. It’s not their money.”
“MY STYLE of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.”
“My people keep telling me I shouldn’t write letters like this to critics. The way I see it, critics get to say what they want to about my work, so why shouldn’t I be able to say what I want to about theirs?”
“I don’t hire a lot of number-crunchers, and I don’t trust fancy marketing surveys. I do my own surveys and draw my own conclusions.”
“The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.”
“Contrary to what a lot of people think, I don’t enjoy doing press. I’ve been asked the same questions a million times now, and I don’t particularly like talking about my personal life.”
“Leverage: don’t make deals without it. Enhance”
“I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small, because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage. My”
“because much more often than you’d think, sheer persistence is the difference between success and failure. In”
“Perhaps because my father never got a college degree himself, he continued to view people who had one with a respect that bordered on awe. In most cases they didn’t deserve it. My father could run circles around most academics and he would have done very well in college, if he’d been able to go.”
“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves. but they can get very excited by those who do. That is why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest, the greatest and the most spectacular.”
“The most important thing in life is to love what you’re doing, because that’s the only way you’ll ever be really good at it.”
“He told me was seeking contributions to the Jimmy Carter Library. I asked how much he had in mind. And he said, " Donald, I would be very appreciative if you contributed five million dollars."I was dumbfounded. I didn't even answer him.But that experience also taught me something.Until then, I'd never understood how Jimmy Carter became president. The answer is that as poorly qualified he was for the job, Jimmy Carter had the nerve, the guts, the balls, to ask for something extraordinary. That ability above all helped him get elected president.”
“Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.”
“Most people think small because they are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning.”
“One thing I’ve learned about the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better. It’s in the nature of the job, and I understand that. The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous,”
“I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.”
“The worst of times often create the best opportunities to make good deals. The”
“I have a very simple rule when it comes to management: hire the best people from your competitors, pay them more than they were earning, and give them bonuses and incentives based on their performance. That’s how you build a first-class operation.”
“The other people I don’t take too seriously are the critics—except when they stand in the way of my projects. In my opinion, they mostly write to impress each other, and they’re just as swayed by fashions as anyone else. One week it’s spare glass towers they are praising to the skies. The next week, they’ve rediscovered old, and they’re celebrating detail and ornamentation.”
“That experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you’re generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make. Because”
“I've never been terribly interested in why people give, because their motivation is rarely what it seems to be, and it's almost never true altruism.”
“You don't reward failure by promoting those responsible for it, because all you get is more failure.”
“put it up for sale at an asking price of $25 million. I first looked at Mar-a-Lago while vacationing in Palm Beach in 1982. Almost immediately I put in a bid of $15 million, and it was promptly rejected. Over the next few years, the foundation signed contracts with several other buyers at higher prices than I’d offered, only to have them fall through before closing. Each time that happened, I put in another bid, but always at a lower sum than before. Finally, in late 1985, I put in a cash offer of $5 million, plus another $3 million for the furnishings in the house. Apparently, the foundation was tired of broken deals. They accepted my offer, and we closed one month later. The day the deal was announced, the Palm Beach Daily News ran a huge front-page story with the headline MAR-A-LAGO’S BARGAIN PRICE ROCKS COMMUNITY. Soon, several far more modest estates on property a fraction of Mar-a-Lago’s size sold for prices in excess of $18 million. I’ve been told that the furnishings in Mar-a-Lago alone are worth more than I paid for the house. It just goes to show that it pays to move quickly and decisively when the time is right. Upkeep”
“Yeah, you got married, didn’t you? But,
you only did it because you thought we were over — and we’re not over. We’ll never be over. If you think that little piece of metal on your finger can shield off your feelings for me, you’re wrong. I wore one for five years and there wasn’t a day that went by where I wasn’t wishing it were you.”
“It's just that this outfit is much easier to deal with than that chastity contraption you had on the last time we were kissing.”
“Chance is the nature of our universe. […] madness represents a chaotic reservoir of surprises. Some surprises can be valuable.”
“For Beatrice, when we first met,
I was lonely, and you were pretty.
Now I am pretty lonely.”
“On Friday noon, July twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below.”
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