There were lots of times, especially in the early days, that were very, very difficult. I think the most difficult experience I had was in 1990 when Oracle had its only loss quarter in history. We’d been in business for 20 years, and after 20 years we lost money one quarter. We had a very difficult time. We had virtually doubled our sales every year for ten years. Nine out of ten years, ten out of eleven years. It was really quite an amazing run. We were the fastest growing company in history

In terms of this issue of these industrial gases affecting the environment, at the beginning the road was not easy, because we were suggesting that society had to change, that industries had to do something different than they were doing at that time. And of course, initially we did not meet with a good reception to these ideas from industry. And even from the scientific community — even though our ideas were well received in the small group of specialists in what we were doing — it was not necessarily well received by the scientific community at large. So we really had to continue doing as good a science as we could, and at the same time trying to well communicate our conviction that it was something important, something that had to change in the way society was functioning.

I do think my mother had a lot to do with that. I mean, after all, you know her — it was not near as bad as having your husband die in a car wreck after — he survives World War II. They had a great life planned, and he gets killed in a car wreck, not because of a concussion, but because in a fluke, the tire blows out on his car. He’s thrown out of the car. He lands in a ditch in a field, and the ditch is full of water, and he can’t get out of the ditch before he drowns. There’s — it made it look a little whiny for me to be all bent out of shape about losing an election, and I realized that it was a weird deal. It was 1980. It was Reagan’s election. It was a period not unlike now, widespread resentment over the stagnant economy, the Iran hostage crisis, and I bet I had a hundred people coming to — I’m not exaggerating — coming to me and saying, “God, Bill, I didn’t know you were going to lose. I just voted against you to because I didn’t like some of the things you’d done.” And I remember once — one of the funniest things that ever happened to me. I was driving over to see my mother. I lived in Little Rock, and she lived in Hot Springs 50 miles away, and in the middle of the trip was a little country store owned by a guy who ran the elections in that area and was real smart, so I went in to get a Coke, and started talking to him. And this little boy came up to me in overalls, and he said, “You’re Bill Clinton, aren’t you?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “I helped to beat you. I cost you 11 votes, and it was no accident.” I said, “You did?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “It was me, my wife, our two boys and their wives, and five of my friends. We just decked you.” I said, “Why’d you do it?” He said, “I had to because you raised my car tax. The car license.” And so we’re standing on the interstate. I said, “Look over there. You remember when I was governor? That highway broke wide open, and even big trucks were off in the ditch, and I had to send the National Guard down here to clean it up, and we had to fix it.” He said, “Yeah, I remember. I don’t care. I still didn’t want to pay it.” So I was laughing at the guy, and I said, “Let me ask you something.” I said, “If I ever ran again, would you vote for me?” He said, “Absolutely.” I said, “You would?” He said, “Sure. We’re even now.” And I went — and there were no cell phones, so I had a dime. I went and put it in the payphone, and I called Hillary, and I said, “You know, I’m not dead yet. We might have to run again.

More than anything else, I had to combat the barriers, and we tore down those barriers. I just had to set a sail against the wind, those strong winds, to end segregation and racial discrimination, but somehow, in some way, I didn’t let those barriers keep me down.

I've had some downturns in my career and various problems, but in fact all those kind of problems turned into something even better. It's kind of amazing, various times in my career.