COURAGE

Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.

When Citibank was on its knees and everyone was running for the exits, I walked in with $590 million. The best time to invest is when everyone else is too scared to.

I came out as gay because I wanted a kid in Alabama or Mississippi who was struggling with their identity to know that a Fortune 500 CEO was too.

Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It is the mastery of fear.

The time to buy is when there is blood in the streets. Even if it is your own blood.

We threw out our entire product and started over. It was terrifying. It was also the best decision we ever made.

I left banking at 49 to sell lipstick online. Everyone thought I had lost my mind. Turns out I found it.

If you are not a little bit scared of what you are building you are not building anything important.

If everyone says your idea is crazy that is not a bad sign. It means nobody has done it yet.

Be color brave not color blind. Pretending you do not see race does not make racism disappear. It makes it invisible.

The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us.

I've never been afraid of big moments. I get butterflies. I get nervous and anxious, but I think those are all good signs.

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

Macro investing is about having a view and the courage to act on it. Most people have the view. Few have the courage.

Reinvesting when terrified is the best time to invest. Every great investor knows this. Very few can do it.

The older I get, the more I see that you can't be a bystander. You gotta get in the arena.

Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.

I've been sued, threatened, and harassed for 20 years. That's the cost of telling the truth about overvalued stocks.

The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.

When everyone is panicking, look at what the data actually says. Usually it says buy.

When you've grown up with nothing, losing money doesn't scare you. Starting over doesn't scare you. Nothing scares you.

Leadership is about solving problems that other people are afraid to touch.

Coming out was the most important thing I ever did. I spent decades hiding who I was. The energy it took to hide could have been spent building.

Teach girls to be brave, not perfect. Perfectionism kills more ambition than failure ever could.

I left school at 16 to race in Europe. Most people thought I was crazy. Most of the best decisions of my life looked crazy at the time.

I never wanted to be the spokesperson for mental health. I just wanted to protect my own. Then I realized protecting it publicly might protect someone else's too.

I had to go back in there for me. Not for the team, not for the medals, not for USA Gymnastics. For me. That was the first time I had ever done that.

The biggest risk in my career was not joining Alibaba. It was staying comfortable at a job that paid well but would never change my life.

I was never afraid of buying a stock at a new high. What I was afraid of was buying a stock at a new low.

I always did something I was a little not ready to do. That's how you grow.

My parents were the first in everything they did. I learned that being first is uncomfortable, but it is always worth it.

The question for Africa's entrepreneurs is not whether the opportunity is there. The question is whether you are willing to go first.

When you build something in a market no one else believes in, the returns reflect that courage.