“Think about who I am. My father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it’s going to mean in many parts of the world—parts of the world that we really care about—when I show up as the President of the United States. I’ll be fundamentally changing the world’s perception of what the United States is all about.

“Isn’t age the most terrible thing.

“Economic downturns are good for innovators and bad for pretty much everyone else. Economic downturns force companies to reevaluate how they spend money. Companies need to cut expenditures dramatically yet are expected to have the same level of service as when times were good. This forces firms to look for alternatives to what they are doing.

“My power lies in your conception. For you, I have no power if you refuse to acknowledge it as such.

“People who invest in early stage companies use all sorts of strategies to stall for time. If a company is 6 months old, stalling for 3 months gives you 50% more data on which to act.

“So friend, the next time you see me with a distant smile during your passionate tirade, it’s not because I’m not paying attention, but probably because I’m picturing you debating somebody I know with views entirely opposite to yours.

“A friend of mine put out some stuff with a sign on it saying it was free to whoever wanted it. It sat there for 3 days so he put a sale sign on it and it was gone less than 5 hours later!

“Free shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today.

“The best way to stimulate the economy is to give money to the poor. They will spend it. Don’t give it to guys like me.

If you are a professional and have confidence, then I would advocate lots of concentration. For everyone else, if it’s not your game, participate in total diversification. If you try to be just a little bit smart, spending an hour a week investing, you’re liable to be really dumb.

Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be.

One of your most important jobs in life will be raising your children. They will learn more from you than they will in graduate school.

Many women have tough situations. I’ve not seen many males having to make tough choices. In my own adult life I did virtually no social functions or meetings that I didn’t want to do. I never had to make a choice between professional and personal.

“The board is a mirror of the mind of the players as the moments pass. When a master studies the record of a game he can tell at what point greed overtook the pupil, when he became tired, when he fell into stupidity, and when the maid came by with tea.