Eli Broad

Someone once told me I'm a sore winner, and they're right. I rarely take more than a moment to enjoy a success before I'm moving on and looking for the next challenge.

I'd be bored to death if I spent all my time with other businesspeople, bankers and lawyers.

Being a Midwesterner, I know that many of the middle-class manufacturing jobs that had been at the heart of our economy are either gone or going, and they're not coming back.

I can't think of another enterprise other than being a homeowner that can't have its debt restructured in bankruptcy. Corporations can but a homeowner can't? Now with securitization the homeowner can't go to the owner of the loan and work things out.

If you have poor management that's not doing the right job, you end up with unions filling the void and... page after page of work rules and thicker and thicker contracts.

The biggest barrier we've seen to student progress is this: School policies and practices often prevent good teachers from doing great work and even dissuade some talented Americans from entering the profession. This needs to change.

It's hard to explain your emotions when you see a work of art.

If you ask why I do what I do - I want to make a difference. I don't just want to maintain the status quo. I want to help people, to work with institutions or create ones when they don't exist.

I believe in the democratization of the arts. What do I mean by that? I think museums, with some exceptions, have a responsibility to educate a much broader public.