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People used to think that private equity was basically just a compensation scheme, but it is much more about making companies more efficient.

It's clear to me when you do private equity well, you're making companies more efficient and helping them grow and become more profitable. That success means our investors - such as public pension funds - benefit, which contributes to the economic wealth of society.

I've probably done more venture capital deals and expansion financings than I have done private equity deals. But both are the same. Private equity companies have also built jobs.

Private equity has been the purview of super wealthy individuals and institutions.

The role of private equity as fiduciaries is certainly to make money.

I think good private equity investors create a lot more economic value than they destroy.

We really wake up every day trying to build businesses. That is the goal of private equity. It's a misnomer out there that private equity profits by shrinking companies. In fact, it's just the opposite. Private equity creates value by growing great companies.

In the '70s and '80s, what private equity did is it changed corporate America. It started holding companies accountable, and for the first time managers started thinking like owners.

People in private equity complain that they have so much capital and so few places to invest. But you have lots of entrepreneurs trying to raise money at the low end and find that they can't get funding because of this mismatch. I think that there is an opportunity there.

There's no question that any of us who are doing an honest job in government could do a lot better in private industry. During the years I was practicing law as an individual, my salary was a great deal more than it is now.