Businessman Quotes

I watch mostly independent films.

I think there will be 20 years of evolution from linear broadcast to internet television.

I hate the photo shoots. I hate all that stuff.

I hate the photo shoots.

I founded Netflix. I've built it steadily over 12 years now, first with DVD becoming profitable in 2002, a head-to-head ferocious battle with Blockbuster and evolving the company toward streaming.

I don't know of any Internet service that opens on a regional basis.

How much has it been your experience that Americans follow what happens in the world?

Great leaders, like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, also focused on the long term.

Comparing Apple to Netflix is like comparing apples to oranges, especially if the oranges made so many mistakes that people stopped eating oranges and just went back to Blockbuster.

Broadcast TV is like the landline of 20 years ago.

About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.

Fibre optic is becoming like electricity. If you look at how electricity spread around the globe 100 years ago, that's what's happening now.

But as an entrepreneur you have to feel like you can jump out of an aeroplane because you're confident that you'll catch a bird flying by. It's an act of stupidity, and most entrepreneurs go splat because the bird doesn't come by, but a few times it does.

At Netflix, we think you have to build a sense of responsibility where people care about the enterprise. Hard work, like long hours at the office, doesn't matter as much to us. We care about great work.

What is research but a blind date with knowledge?

Retiring is just practicing up to be dead. That doesn't take any practice.

Like what you do, if you don't like it, do something else.

I've never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.

Golf is a game in which you yell 'Fore!', shoot six, and write down five.

Every pessimist who ever lived has been buried in an unmarked grave. Tomorrow has always been better than today, and it always will be.

Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote.

In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these.

If 'pro' is the opposite of 'con' what is the opposite of 'progress'?

If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of ten it will.

When the ambassadors of other foreign countries come to Japan to make treaties, they can be told that such and such a treaty has been made with the ambassador of the United States, and they will rest satisfied with this.

We were sent to this country by the President, who desires to promote the welfare of Japan, and are quite different from the ambassadors of other countries.

We do not wish to open your ports to foreign trade all at once.

Two things are desired in order that intercourse may be had: First, that a minister or agent be allowed to reside at the capital. Second, that commerce between different countries be freely allowed.

The United States have no possessions in the east and do not desire to have any, as other countries do.

The President wishes the Japanese to be very prudent about the introduction of opium, and if a treaty is made, he wishes that opium may be strictly prohibited.