Carlos Slim Quotations

Any personal crisis - you have to use it to get stronger.

At 25, I made many companies. I was thinking more like a businessman or entrepreneur than a CEO. I created many companies, small companies, medium companies. I tried to be involved in many kinds of activities, in finance, in real estate, in mining.

It's important to give a better country to your children, but it is more important to give better children to your country.

Profitability is coming from productivity, efficiency, management, austerity, and the way to manage the business.

I buy companies for strategic reasons and operate them.

I love baseball. And American Football, too. But not rugby.

Low interest rates are a big opportunity for investment. But the issue is that this money should go to the real economy, not the financial economy.

How can you be on top of the things you do? I think when you are involved in a business, first of all you need to know the business. After that you know the business, you can - the numbers tell you what is happening. You can read with the numbers.

I studied engineering in the national university, the Universidad Autonoma, in San Ildefonso.

If you are in business, you are not enjoying. You are working.

The year 1983 was crazy. People wanted to sell not only their investments... but also their companies.

You want to have a toy and another toy, and that's not maturity. The biggest things in life are not materials.

Well, when I was very young, maybe 12 years, I began to make investments.

You cannot make thousands of universities or hundreds of thousands of professors, but with technology and the Internet you can have great courses and make a digital university.

No, my father passed away when I was 13 years old. I was very young.

My parents weren't artistic, but I was always surrounded by beautiful things. And Mexico is a country which has experienced thousands of years of art and culture.

The biggest things in life are not materials.

I think that anything that has privileges have responsibility and all people that is clear about their responsibility has compromise.

In high school, I loved history. I also loved cosmography, algebra. Mexico is so rich in culture and history, and I have always enjoyed that.

My mother born in Mexico, but was Lebanese in origin. She born 1902 the same year my father arrived to Mexico when he was 14 years old.

CompUSA was a bad decision. We stayed too much with CompUSA, and we stayed too short with Apple.

It's a society of knowledge and experience. You have better experience and knowledge when you are 60, 65 and 70.

Our philosophy is you need to give nonprofit money for health, nutrition, education, culture, and sports.

There are people who are good for letters and others that are good for numbers.

Staying occupied displaces preoccupation and problems, and when we face our problems, they disappear.

Choose the right employees and then set them loose.

All businesses make mistakes. The trick is to avoid large ones.

Firm and patient optimism always yields its rewards.

I think one of the big errors people are making right now is thinking that old-style businesses will be obsolete, when actually they will be an important part of this new civilization. Some retail groups are introducing e-commerce and think that the bricks are no longer useful. But they will continue to be important.

Courage taught me no matter how bad a crisis gets… any sound investment will eventually pay off.

Poverty isn’t solved with donations.

I've always said that the better off you are, the more responsibility you have for helping others

Building a business and becoming a billionaire is it's not championship. It's the competence; the competence in your sector with other companies not looking to have some kind of records in this issue.

You cannot live without doing something.

I still have my laptop but I haven't used it. I'm a paper man, not electronic.

I've always said that the better off you are, the more responsibility you have for helping others. Just as I think it's important to run companies well, with a close eye to the bottom line, I think you have to use your entrepreneurial experience to make corporate philanthropy effective.

It is not important NOT to make mistakes, but the mistakes to be small

It's not a question of arriving and putting in a whole new administration, but instead, arriving and "compacting" things as much as possible, reducing management layers. We want as few management layers as possible, so that executives are very close to the operations. We also don't believe in having big corporate infrastructures.

The truth is, you leave this world with nothing. What you are is a temporary administrator, and you must administer well... the wealth in your care, and generate more. The surplus can be used to do many things for people.

You have to have an international reference of competition. You have to go beyond your home.

Work well done is not only a responsibility to yourselves and society; it is also an emotional need.

When there is a crisis, that's when some are interested in getting out and that's when we are interested in getting in.

Money is not a goal. The goal is to make companies grow, develop, be competitive, be in different areas, be efficient to have a great human team inside the company.

You cannot have people in your organization who are pessimists. They take you to mediocrity.

Technology is going to transform people's lives and society everywhere in the world. I spend most of my time studying new technologies. My main task is to understand what's going on and try to see where we can fit in.

I am convinced that all this poverty in Mexico and in Latin America, like it's happening in China is the opportunity to grow. It's an opportunity for investment; it's an economic activity and to take out poverty is the best investment any person or a person can do in any place.

All times are good time for those who know how to work and have the tools to do so.

The key is the Internet. The United States is by far the most advanced country in this new digital culture, so we have to be there. The Internet is the heart of this new civilization, and telecommunications are the nervous system, or circulatory system.

When you live for others' opinions, you are dead. I don't want to live thinking about how I'll be remembered.

When we decide to do something, we do it quickly.

Do not allow negative feelings and emotions to control your mind. Emotional harm does not come from others; it is conceived and developed within ourselves.

When you live for others' opinions, you are dead.

Focus on essentials and try not to get distracted and bogged down by things that don't add value to the bottom line.

In this new wave of technology, you can't do it all yourself, you have to form alliances.

Competition makes you better, always, always makes you better, even if the competitor wins.

Mistakes are normal and human. Make them small, accept them, correct them, and forget them.

Anyone who is not investing now is missing a tremendous opportunity.

Most people try to make a better world for our children when what they should be doing is making better children for our world.

When we face our problems, they disappear. So learn from failure and let success be the silent incentive.

Live the present intensely and fully, do not let the past be a burden, and let the future be an incentive. Each person forges his or her own destiny.

With three work days a week, we would have more time to relax; for quality of life,

When everybody else is better off, they can buy more, they strengthen demand, strengthen the market, strengthen the country.

I think I can work with any of them. We are going to continue investing, whoever wins. We think long term, not just four or six years. We believe the country is strong, like almost all the countries in Latin America.

I think I can work with any of them.

The artistic part of us all - I think that the easiest way to appreciate this - is through architecture. Architecture is very impressive; the beauty of buildings, temples.

We don't take anything when we pass away, and we need to do with the sense of responsibility.

We really think highly of the executives at SBC. And Microsoft is one of the great companies of the 21st century. It is in all of our best interests to work together. In this new wave of technology, you can't do it all yourself; you have to form alliances.

You don't need to raise taxes on rich people, because they create capitalization and investment. But you need to tax speculation - meaning capital gains.

We have great confidence in Colombia, great confidence in its government and great confidence in Colombia's future.

We will devote all the resources necessary to make this venture a success.

We think that in Mexico, online trading of shares and financial instruments is not going to be as important as it is in the U.S. On days that there is a banking holiday in the U.S., you hardly see any movement here on the stock exchange.

First I opened a check account. I looked at the - I looked that there was nothing of yield. So I bought some bonds. It was a bond. When I bought this bond, it was duplicated in 10 years. I think it was 10 percent.

When I was very young, maybe 12 years, I began to make investments.

You should have more time for you during all of your life - not when you're 65 and retired.

You need to support human development and human capital as much as possible. And we've had 25 years of programs, great programs. We supported 125,000 surgeries. We fund 15,000 scholarships every year for college and higher education. We gave bicycles for rural areas. We gave laptops.

If Wal-Mart invests a billion dollars and others invest $100 million, Wal-Mart is going to grow more.