English Script Request

Over the years, people have asked me how I've gotten so much done: I've started two Fortune 500 companies, and then the last twelve years in philanthropy, which include school reform across America, scientific and medical research, things we've done: the arts - building two museums, and I thought about it, and I said - you know, maybe people can learn from what I've done from both my successes and frankly some of the mistake I've made, so I've thought writing a book and telling my experience would benefit whether students, entrepreneurs, business people, people in the arts, and others.

I first - uh - saw that George Bernard quote about "all progress comes from unreasonable men" when my wife gave me a plaque several years after we were married. And I thought about it over the years, and I kept it on my desk for many many years. I don't think I'm reasonable. Other people think I'm reasonable because I'm demanding, they think I wanna do things that can't be accomplished, they think I want them to do more than they can do and so on.

Someone says "you can't do that". I said "why not?" And often they don't have an answer other than saying what's ever been done before. I think knowledge and ideas are the greatest currency. You got to keep informed. And also, you - I mean, specifically you want to do research. The greater you are informed, the less risky something ends up being.

When we decided we wanted to diversify back in 1971, I said let's look at all the businesses during the Great Depression, and what I've found is home builders went broke, banks went broke, savings and loans went broke, mortgage companies went broke, but life insurance companies did pretty well. We acquired Sun Life Insurance of America in 1971 and turned it into a retirement savings company. I think we paid about 50 some odd million dollars in cash and stock, but then in 1999, we were able to sell it for 18 billion dollars, and by the way, for a decade we were the best performing stock of the New York Stock Exchange.

I think our approach to our collecting is very different because we started with personal collection. Then, we were - had all our walls filled, but wanted continued connecting, so we did something no one else has done. We created an art foundation to build a collection that's a lending library for museums throughout the world. It's important to set unreasonable goals if you want to change things. If you're just reasonable and do whatever's already been done - things that everyone accepts - you don't make much of a difference, but at the end of the day, there's an art to being unreasonable, and you know what - at the end of the day - if you do it right, people respect you.