Top 100 Michael Bloomberg Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Don’t be afraid to assert yourself, have confidence in your abilities and don’t let the bastards get you down.”

— Michael Bloomberg

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2. “Progress is not inevitable. It’s up to us to create it.”

— Michael Bloomberg

3. “Being an entrepreneur isn’t really about starting a business. It’s a way of looking at the world: seeing opportunity where others see obstacles, taking risks when others take refuge.”

— Michael Bloomberg

4. “You must first be willing to fail – and you must have the courage to go for it anyway.”

— Michael Bloomberg

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

5. “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.”

— Michael Bloomberg

6. “After hard work, the biggest determinant is being in the right place at the right time.”

— Michael Bloomberg

7. “Entrepreneurship is having an idea to do something great and not entirely have a plan on how to do it but the drive and will power to make it work.”

— Michael Bloomberg

8. “If you want to know how to solve society’s problems, you start out with better public education.”

— Michael Bloomberg

9. “If you don’t encounter setbacks in your career, if you don’t have doubts and disappointments, let me tell you, you’re not dreaming big enough.”

— Michael Bloomberg

10. “The next day after I got fired, literally the next day, I started a new company.”

— Michael Bloomberg

11. “We have an expression in New York City government – “In God we trust, but for everyone else, bring data.” It’s so easy to pick up a sound byte and say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I believe that,” without really thinking.”

— Michael Bloomberg

12. “Working collectively and collaboratively is the difference between mediocrity by yourself or success as a team. You have to share the pain and the responsibility and if you do then you will also share in the rewards.”

— Michael Bloomberg

13. “One’s a dog-eat-dog world, and the other one’s just the opposite.”

— Michael Bloomberg

14. “In New York City, a lot of people think ‘the great outdoors’ is the area between your front door and a taxi cab.”

— Michael Bloomberg

15. “Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be – given the devastation it is wreaking – should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”

— Michael Bloomberg

16. “I’ve always respected those who tried to change the world for the better, rather than just complain about it.”

— Michael Bloomberg

17. “In the game of life, when the final buzzer sounds, the only stat you carry with you is the number of assists you made.”

— Michael Bloomberg

18. “Five years have come, and five years have gone, and still we stand together as one. We come back to this place to remember the heartbreaking anniversary – and each person who died here – those known and unknown to us, whose absence is always with us.”

— Michael Bloomberg

19. “I don’t know why you should be proud of something. It doesn’t make you any better or worse. You are what you are.”

— Michael Bloomberg

20. “What you’ve got to do is be honest. Say what you believe. Give it to them straight. Just don’t wuss out.”

— Michael Bloomberg

21. “To a contrarian like me, constant advice not to do something almost always starts me quickly down the risky, unpopular path.”

— Michael Bloomberg

22. “Trees will improve property values, take pollutants out of the air, help with water runoff.”

— Michael Bloomberg

23. “Buy what’s deliverable, not what could be.”

— Michael Bloomberg

24. “I like the theater, dining and chasing women. Let me put it this way: I am a single, straight billionaire in Manhattan. It’s like a wet dream.”

— Michael Bloomberg

25. “If you can’t prove it’s not true then a certain number of people will glom on and say it is true.”

— Michael Bloomberg

26. “Nobody wants a job where they don’t have authority to go along with the responsibility. Quite the contrary. The more authority you give people, the better people you can attract, and the harder they’re going to work, and the more loyal they are going to be.”

— Michael Bloomberg

27. “Many of America’s and New York’s sons and daughters are around the world fighting for the freedoms that the Statue of Liberty stands for.”

— Michael Bloomberg

28. “If someone tells me they skied all day and never fell down, I tell them to find another mountain.”

— Michael Bloomberg

29. “The mistake that was made in the ’70s is we stopped policing the streets, we stopped cleaning the streets, we stopped cleaning the graffiti off buildings, we stopped supporting our cultural institutions and building parks and schools and all those kinds of things.”

— Michael Bloomberg

30. “America is built around this premise that you can do it, and there are an awful lot of people who are unlikely to have done it who did.”

— Michael Bloomberg

31. “I have two daughters that are the loves of my life and I want to leave them a better world, a better country, a better state and a better city.”

— Michael Bloomberg

32. “You bet I did and I enjoyed it.”

— Michael Bloomberg

33. “I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom.”

— Michael Bloomberg

34. “When it comes to public school education, we have been unwilling to measure our results. We’ve been unwilling to pay based on performance. We have tenure where, even if you can’t teach, you can’t get fired. We’ve been unwilling to invest in new schools.”

— Michael Bloomberg

35. “Leading from the front: It’s what built America. But these days, the federal government isn’t at the front – it’s cowering in the back corner of the room, ducking responsibility and hoping no one notices.”

— Michael Bloomberg

36. “I never liked anyone who didn’t have a temper. If you don’t have a temper, you don’t have any passion.”

— Michael Bloomberg

37. “Like Israel, New York City’s history has been defined by immigrants who come in search of freedom and the opportunity to build a better life. And like Israel, New York City has remained a target for terrorists who seek to destroy that freedom.”

— Michael Bloomberg

38. “If you want to do something for your children and show how much you love them, the single best thing-by far-is to support organizations that will create a better world for them and their children.”

— Michael Bloomberg

39. “I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”

— Michael Bloomberg

40. “The truth of the matter is: you can create a great legacy, and inspire others, by giving it to philanthropic organizations.”

— Michael Bloomberg

41. “No place epitomizes the American experience and the American spirit more than New York City.”

— Michael Bloomberg

42. “Central planning didn’t work for Stalin or Mao, and it won’t work for an entrepreneur either.”

— Michael Bloomberg

43. “Neither party has God on its side, a monopoly on good ideas, or a lock on any single fiscal, social, or moral philosophy.”

— Michael Bloomberg

44. “If you are honest with yourself and if you want to like what you see in the mirror, is you have to say what you really believe.”

— Michael Bloomberg

45. “I don’t know why people carry guns. Guns kill people.”

— Michael Bloomberg

46. “Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody’s got to pay for them so they’re a necessary evil.”

— Michael Bloomberg

47. “If a hurricane strikes, we can blame the president for not being there; we can blame Congress and FEMA; we can blame the state governments; but in the end, it’s the mayors and the local city governments that have to be prepared for emergencies and be prepared to act.”

— Michael Bloomberg

48. “In science, a path that turns out to be a dead end is very useful because you don’t devote resources to focusing on that; you go elsewheres.”

— Michael Bloomberg

49. “Today, you’re a piranha if you are seen having coffee with somebody from the other party in many cases.”

— Michael Bloomberg

50. “The fact is, the most painful and tragic lesson of the 20th century was that regimes based on racial superiority and religious hatred can’t be trusted to keep their word to the international community.”

— Michael Bloomberg