Jimmy Lai

“If Tung Chee-hwa dies, the stock market will take off.”

“I can't rely on my money to be happy.”

“I don't care about my personal security or my internet security.”

“I thought that if I could speed up the production of animation, I could make a big business out of recreating the amazing images of the news because what we get on TV is always the last bit of image.”

“If I really treated business like a businessman, I wouldn't have done what I have done - opposing China. No businessman in their right mind would do this because you know that there will be repercussions.”

“If we want to make Tiger Woods's or Al Gore's face, the best thing would be to have them come to our light stage so we can scan their faces for our database. But in a couple of hours, all we can do is find a face which looks similar and then correct it.”

“I wouldn't have launched 'Sharp Daily' without smartphones. Frankly, there's no reason for me to start another newspaper - it's a dying industry. But the smartphone is changing everything.”

“Everybody told me that Taiwan is a very polite society and that people don't like gossip and scandals here. But they just pretend they don't like it. We have, by far, the biggest newspaper in Taiwan. They just buy it to read it at home.”

“It's not mainland China that rubs me up the wrong way, it is the dictatorship that rubs me up the wrong way. It's the freedom that we Chinese people are not allowed that rubs me up the wrong way.”

“I don't think I should ask my kids to inherit my business, because they can't start where I did: I was from the street. I'm a very different make of person. I've been a fighter all my life.”

“I think gossip and scandal is something from Western culture that has pervaded the rest of the world.”

“When I escaped from China and came to Hong Kong, the contrast was that China was like hell and Hong Kong like heaven. Though I was very poor, I smelled the air of freedom and was full of hope for the future. That's the way I thought heaven is.”

“As long as I'm alive, I don't think Next Media will change.”

“You cannot have the media so close to you that it becomes your voice. This is no good because it becomes too extreme, and people will resent it.”

“Nobody will have control of the media in the future, because user-generated content is going to become the major content.”

“Domestically, a lot of people think Xi Jinping is becoming Mao Zedong. By giving Hong Kong democracy, people would look at them as enlightened leaders.”