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Carlos Slim
Financier and Philanthropist
You have the privilege and responsibility of managing wealth. I know -- and my children are agreed in the same area -- that when I die I will not take anything. I think that people (a person), that has wealth of his own, or maybe a government, a politician that manages the wealth of the people, or has the responsibility to manage money, the responsibility is to be efficient with the wealth, to manage it okay. And you are worried about the efficiency and the way you use it. At the end, you manage the wealth temporarily when you are alive, and maybe you are still alive and you put the wealth to be managed by others.
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Carlos Slim
Financier and Philanthropist
I think it's important to leave your children a better country, but it's maybe more important to leave your country better children, first of all. And second, you're looking for the happiness of your children. I think that work is not only social responsibility, but it is an emotional need. You need to work. You need to do things. You need to be active. You cannot be lazy. Without doing anything, it is bad for your emotional health. No? I tried to educate (my children) and that was the lesson from my father also, about responsibility and compromise, because wealth is a responsibility and compromise. When you die, you don't take anything. You are a kind of temporary manager of wealth.
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Frederick W. Smith
Founder, Federal Express
When I first met Sergeant Jackson I had grown a mustache and had taken up the affectation of smoking cigars, because I thought this made me look, you know, quite dashing and much older than my 22 years, or what have you. And the first thing that Sergeant Jackson did after I asked him to, in essence, take the insignia off, you know, just tell me straight up what I could do to improve my performance. And he told me, he said, "Well, the first thing, shave off that ridiculous mustache, and quite smoking the cigars -- because you look absurd -- and be yourself." And I don't think I ever forgot that. I don't think I ever tried an affectation after that point in my life.
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Frederick W. Smith
Founder, Federal Express
It's not like we're carrying sand and gravel. You know, we're carrying chemotherapy drugs, and important manuscripts, and electronic parts, and pieces for airplanes that are grounded. So when we pick it up and say, "We're going to have it there early the next morning," I mean we have to deliver. There's nothing else to it. So putting the guarantee in place was much more important internally than it was externally. Because most of our customers -- based on the experience they've had with us -- they believe we'll do it. But it's when we said to all of the employees, "This is guaranteed. If we don't get it there, we don't get paid."
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Stephen Sondheim
Award-winning Composer and Lyricist
Among the shows that passed the desk, I looked at one and the title page said Assassins -- I just immediately thought, "That's a musical," without knowing anything about it -- by a man named Charles Gilbert. And I opened it up and it was essentially a tale of a soldier who comes back from Vietnam and he's politicized and becomes an assassin and he tries to assassinate I'm not sure if it was the president. I think it was. At any rate, along with this story, which is really one of paranoia, there was a sort of Sidney Greenstreet figure who would appear as sort of the spirit of evil, who would appear sporadically and read quotations from various politicians' letters. I don't think they were all presidents, but anyway. So it was interspersed with history, and it wasn't for us. We decided not to do it. But many years later I was talking to John Weidman. We had written together, and we wanted to write something else together, and I mentioned this to him, and his eyes lit up and he got it right away, the way I did, and he said, "I don't know what it is, but that's a great idea." I said, "Let me see if I can track down Charles Gilbert," and I did, and I wrote him a letter, and I said, "Could we use your idea? We won't use your show, just the idea of Assassins." And to my delighted surprise, he said "Absolutely, providing that it doesn't ever prevent me from putting my show on, if I can find a way to put it on." I said absolutely not.
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