131 Quotes by Eli Broad

If someone can't give me a good reason why you can't do something, I find a way to do it.

Research – and using what you learn from it to analyze every situation – is what separates being unreasonable from being irrational.

While I am proud of a number of accomplishments, there are real costs to being unreasonable. Long hours. Too little time with family. A near incapacity for, as they say, stopping and smelling the roses.

There is no substitute for knowledge. To this day, I read three newspapers a day. It is impossible to read a paper without being exposed to ideas. And ideas - more than money - are the real currency for success.

To me, money is a means to do good. I reached a point in my life where I had enjoyed tremendous business success that afforded my family everything we could possibly want. My wife and I then decided that we could use our wealth to make a difference. So we created the Broad Foundations to do four things: to improve urban public education, to support innovative scientific and medical research, to foster art appreciation for audiences worldwide and to support civic initiatives in Los Angeles.

Contemporary art challenges us.. it broadens our horizons. It asks us to think beyond the limits of conventional wisdom.

Los Angeles is such a great meritocracy. Where can someone with my background - don't have the right family background, the right religion, the right provenance or whatever you want to call it - I come here and I'm accepted. The city's been good to me. And I want to give back.

Los Angeles is one of the four cultural capitals of the world, but we don't attract as many cultural tourists as New York, London or Paris. I want to change that.

several million dollars when all is said and done.