Bill Ackman

Experience is making mistakes and learning from them.

Preserving the 30-year prepayable fixed-rate mortgage - it's like the bedrock of the housing system - is critical.

I'm an extremely, extremely persistent person. Extremely. And when I believe I am right, and it is important, I will go to the end of the earth.

If I believe that I am right, I will take it to the end of the earth until I am proven right.

I was a little bit of a cocky kid.

I think good private equity investors create a lot more economic value than they destroy.

I think a very good system in a world with a lot of passive investors is one in which there are at least a few entrepreneurial investors, prepared to say what they think, prepared to propose a change in management, change in strategy, change in cost structure, capital structure.

I'm not emotional about investments. Investing is something where you have to be purely rational and not let emotion affect your decision making - just the facts.

I love what I do. I don't do it for the money. I work on behalf of investors that I like and want to do well for. I'm a competitive person.

Herbalife: the customers are fictitious, the business opportunity is a scam, the university degree is a fraud.

The President is the CEO of this business that we call America.

If you think of the typical Herbalife distributor and their level of sophistication, to this day I still don't understand the marketing plan - true story.