There’s a few that are immediate, because he just drilled them into my head. One is “Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.” Try as hard as you want to market something, get a crowd. That’s what actually matters. Another one that he still says all the time is, “You’ve got a violin, I’ve got a barn. Let’s put on a show. Don’t overthink this, just go.

Maestro Abreu always said something very, very beautiful. He said, “The culture for poor people cannot be a poor culture.” You know, and he said in the sense that for the poor people, for the people that needs, we have to give the best, the best that we can.

And what this person told me was that what you need to do is that, when you go to the White House, always say in the back of your mind that this may be the last time I’m going there because I might have to tell this president something he doesn’t like.

My mother used to say to me a thing which, when I look back on it, wasn’t terribly logical. — and I had a pretty hearty appetite, but when I had had a large meal put in front of me, and even I couldn’t get through it, she would say, “Edmund, remember the starving millions in Asia.” Now what possible use my consuming it would do for the starving millions in Asia, I don’t really know, but the fact remains that I was brought up to think about the starving millions in Asia. That meant I had to clean my plate up and not waste it. Later on, I got more involved with the starving millions in Asia, perhaps in a slightly more practical way: helping some of them with schooling and hospitaling and even in agriculture.

I had a teacher who was a great influence on me, when I was in boarding school at Loomis, Jim Wilson. He was my economics teacher and he was also my dorm head. I didn’t know what economics was before I took this course. I was really moved by the course. I was moved by him. That’s probably one of the reasons I chose the field of business.

And that’s what’s given us the ability to say no. It’s one of the most important things at the end of the day, being able to say no to an investment. Even if you’ve done a lot of work, work will never hurt you.

When I went through school, I was in a hurry. I was an economics major as an undergraduate, and I was a finance major in graduate school. I was in a hurry to succeed when I got out in the business world. I’m sorry I didn’t take more courses in the humanities and in history and in the arts.