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In life, you don't have a level of confrontation and the nonsense you run into when you're a CEO. CEOs aren't born.

Nobody knows how to be a CEO. It's something you have to learn. It's a very lonely job.

I hadn't grown up always aspiring to be a CEO.

I never set out to be CEO. I always set out to be a good team member, a good colleague.

Great CEOs are not just born with shiny hair and a tie.

I think the greatest CEOs in the United States, business, anyway, are the ones you don't hear too much about.

I think, you know, a fellow CEO said to me that the interesting thing about being CEO that's really striking is that you have very few decisions that you need to make, and you need to make them absolutely perfectly.

To be a CEO is a calling. You should not do it because it is a job. It is a calling, and you have got to be involved in it with your head, heart and hands. Your heart has got to be in the job; you got to love what you do; it consumes you. And if you are not willing to get into the CEO job that way, there is no point getting into it.

Businessmen... were not born chief executives. They were often people first.

I always believe that, as you start out, while you should have a big dream - a big goal - but it's also important to move step by step. So, you know, frankly, if you ask me, when I started as a management trainee in 1984, I don't know that I really thought that I would become the CEO.