Top 50 Jamie Dimon Quotes

The denigration of business hurts America, because the secret sauce for our economy is confidence. I don’t want to hear that nonsense that all business is bad.

There are downsides to a lot of things. There are downsides to flying – people die every now and then. Do you want to stop all air flights? There are downsides to pharma; sometimes they’re misused. Do you want to stop using pills?

If you’re making all your money simply betting on interest rates, that’s not a business. Flow is a business. On the outside, they look the same for a while. But when you dig into them, no, they weren’t exactly the same.

I love my children. I spend a lot of time with them.

The government has the right to change laws and rules and regulations.

I don’t buy this thing that our industry is responsible for all the ills of the world. We have great people at JPMorgan Chase. We operate with a lot of rigor. Our clients are happy with us.

Companies that grow for the sake of growth or that expand into areas outside their core business strategy often stumble. On the other hand, companies that build scale for the benefit of their customers and shareholders more often succeed over time.

Economies of scale are a good thing. If we didn’t have them, we’d still be living in tents and eating buffalo.

I get to deal with presidents and prime ministers and – and employees from tellers on up. And I love it.

That’s my contribution – running a sound, healthy company that serves millions of customers well and employs hundreds of thousands of people. What else am I going to do? I’m not an artist. I’m not a writer. I’m not a musician. I’d love to be a tennis player or musician. I’m not.

You wonder, ‘How could it possibly be me?’ Well, of course it could happen to you. You have it. Then, of course, you wake up every morning, and you hope it’s a bad dream. Then you wake up. I have cancer.

I have gotten disturbed at… some of the Democrats’ anti-business behavior, the sentiment, the attacks on work ethic and successful people. I think it’s very counter-productive.

You can design a mortgage system that is different without a Fannie and Freddie, but there are principles you have to have, to have a good system.

If you’re blindly loyal to me, then you’re just acting like a crony of mine. If you say you admire me because of the principles for which I stand, I understand that, but then you also have the right to call me to the carpet when you think I’m falling short.

Business has to have a seat at the table. Infrastructure isn’t going to be built properly if business doesn’t have a seat at the table. A school is not going to happen if businesses don’t work with schools about what kind of jobs they really need.

Among those people not graduating, there might be a Steve Jobs or Barack Obama. We’ll never know.

If business doesn’t thrive, it hurts America. We need improved relations, more collaboration, more thought and more consistency as we go about trying to make sure we have the best country in the world. Not scapegoating and finger-pointing.

In America, you keep on hearing productivity is low; secular stagnation, it’s a new normal. It’s just not true: We’ve had multiple wars; we’re not educating our kids. We had government shut downs, badly-spent money, failures in the health system, failures and an extreme amount of regulation – that’s why we’re going slow.

I am not responsible for the financial crisis, I hate to tell you.

You can compromise without violating your principles, but it is nearly impossible to compromise when you turn principles into ideology.

I am not interested when people refer to a quarter or this year because the way I look at a country is what are its prospects over the next 20-30 years, and India’s are good.

You cannot prove this in real time, but when economists 20 years from now write a book on the recovery, it may well be entitled, ‘It could have been much better.’

First of all, I yell very little, just so you know. Maybe years ago I did more, but I yell very little.

America is best when we come together with clear leadership, expertise, and the political will to take on difficult challenges and get things done. No one should ever doubt the strength and resilience of our country and our democracy.

I’ve seen people, when they get into these bigger and bigger jobs, it goes to their heads. I’ve seen it. Some people in life change who they are, and some don’t. I’m basically the same guy I’ve always been.

Some things never change – there will be another crisis, and its impact will be felt by the financial markets.

I would love to be the president of United States, and I think I would be good at it, but it’s too late, and it is too hard.

It’s great that people get together and collaborate, talk about the facts and the analysis, all in the interest of having a great financial system.

I am not embarrassed to be a banker. I am not embarrassed to be in business.

Unraveling the euro is a terrible thing. This is a 50-year endeavor to get this continent together and that’s a wonderful endeavor.

I think that technology is the best thing that ever happened to mankind. It’s an absurd notion that somehow, ‘My God, what are we going to do when driverless cars come along?’ It’s going to save lives on the road. And maybe, one day, we’ll all be working four days a week and not five or six days a week.

It is vital for officials and regulators to have input from people within our businesses who understand the intricacies of how financial markets operate and the consequences of certain policy decisions.

Until Donald Trump got to where he was, they said you’ll never see a rich businessman who’s never been in politics be president. I clearly was wrong about that.

People need to understand: Businesses are going to make mistakes. They shouldn’t be shot and hung every time.

There are legitimate concerns long term, in my view, about nuclear war and policy and stuff like that. But the world has become a better place every 20 years for the last 2,000 years.

Americans should understand that 50%, or something like, of the kids in inner-city schools, often poor and often minority, don’t graduate. And the ones that do don’t necessarily have the skills to get a job. That is the biggest disgrace in this country.

I hope the story of 2011 is that America gets its mojo back. You’ve got to remember that America has the best universities; it’s got some of the best businesses. It’s got an unbelievable work ethic, rule of law. The story of 2011 will be America blossoming again.

I’m very close to thinking the United States shouldn’t be in Basel any more. I would not have agreed to rules that are blatantly anti-American. Our regulators should go there and say, ‘If it’s not in the interests of the United States, we’re not doing it.’

I am a patriot: I want to help my country and help it grow.

We are totally open kimono with regulators.

America has the best hand ever dealt to any country on this planet, ever. Yes, we have problems, but you travel around the world, you’ll see we have it all.

When people blanket a whole class of people with statements, I just think that is unfair to everybody. I could do the same thing about media. I can do the same thing about politicians or lawyers, and they’re just never accurate.

When my grandfather was born, there was no healthcare. There were no airplanes. There were no boats. There were no trains. There were no communications. No Internet. No widespread knowledge. It will be a completely different world but a much better place in a hundred years.

The best way to look at any business is from the standpoint of the clients.

If the government wants to do social policy, it should not be done in a quasi-public company. If you have a mortgage guarantee company which is done by the U.S. government, it should be guaranteed by the originators, i.e., the shareholder.

I am struck that so many of our leaders in the U.S. forget how strong our country can be.

Virtual currency, where it’s called a bitcoin vs. a U.S. dollar, that’s going to be stopped. No government will ever support a virtual currency that goes around borders and doesn’t have the same controls. It’s not going to happen.

The United States has the best, deepest, widest, and most transparent capital markets in the world which give you, the investor, the ability to buy and sell large amounts at very cheap prices. That is a good thing.

Capping the size of American banks won’t eliminate the needs of big businesses; it will force them to turn to foreign banks that won’t face the same restrictions.

If the economy grows, housing gets better, quicker.