Carlos Slim

“How can you be on top of the things you do? I think when you are involved in a business, first of all you need to know the business. After that you know the business, you can - the numbers tell you what is happening. You can read with the numbers.”

“First I opened a check account. I looked at the - I looked that there was nothing of yield. So I bought some bonds. It was a bond. When I bought this bond, it was duplicated in 10 years. I think it was 10 percent.”

“You want to have a toy and another toy, and that's not maturity. The biggest things in life are not materials.”

“Profitability is coming from productivity, efficiency, management, austerity, and the way to manage the business.”

“CompUSA was a bad decision. We stayed too much with CompUSA, and we stayed too short with Apple.”

“I think that anything that has privileges have responsibility and all people that is clear about their responsibility has compromise.”

“I don't have business with any politicians.”

“You should have more time for you during all of your life - not when you're 65 and retired.”

“We really think highly of the executives at SBC. And Microsoft is one of the great companies of the 21st century. It is in all of our best interests to work together. In this new wave of technology, you can't do it all yourself; you have to form alliances.”

“The year 1983 was crazy. People wanted to sell not only their investments... but also their companies.”

“We don't take anything when we pass away, and we need to do with the sense of responsibility.”

“There are people who are good for letters and others that are good for numbers.”

“You need to support human development and human capital as much as possible. And we've had 25 years of programs, great programs. We supported 125,000 surgeries. We fund 15,000 scholarships every year for college and higher education. We gave bicycles for rural areas. We gave laptops.”

“I've always said that the better off you are, the more responsibility you have for helping others. Just as I think it's important to run companies well, with a close eye to the bottom line, I think you have to use your entrepreneurial experience to make corporate philanthropy effective.”

“When I was very young, maybe 12 years, I began to make investments.”

“In high school, I loved history. I also loved cosmography, algebra. Mexico is so rich in culture and history, and I have always enjoyed that.”