The person who should really write an appreciation of the late great Dom DeLuise is Burt Reynolds, who, even more than Mel Brooks, made of the jolly, beanie wearing fat man a side-kick and a legend.
The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers.
I have driven school buses, sold egg rolls and painted houses, and I have often wondered what my life would have been like if I hadn't gone into acting. Mind you, it's a great life, going around pretending you're other people and getting paid ridiculous sums of money for it.
I remember in '37 when trolley cars were so big in New York. It was five cents for a ride... There used to be open-air buses, and you could go up a spiral staircase and sit up on top. Those were great, great days.
So Bush certainly wasn't the greatest, and Obama has not done the job. And he's created a lot of disincentive. He's created a lot of great dissatisfaction. Regulations and regulatory is going through the roof. It's almost impossible to get anything done in the country.
It's crazy enough to be the person crawling through the bushes in Northern Ireland with a telescopic lens taking pictures - there are crazy people out there. But the idea that people want to go to sites and find out those spoilers... it's like if there was a website called Last Pages of Great Books, would you read that?
There is not often much policy discussion with the Bushes. There isn't much introspection. Several generations of Bush men could pass by in which the great questions of humankind will go undiscussed.
What I learned at Oxford has been used to great advantage throughout my business career.
St. Louis has a great startup scene and a vibrant business community.
I've very proud to be mayor of our great city. It's a city with a heart and a soul. Chicago has a unique spirit. Our business community wants to give back.
We are a mission-driven company. In order to do this, we have to build a great team. And in order to do that, you need people to know they can make a bunch of money. So we need a business model to make a lot of money.
My business partner gave me a drone, a small helicopter you pilot with an iPhone, and also it has a camera so you can see what it sees on the iPhone. Great fun. I fly it outside in Portugal. It's wonderful to oversee gardens.
I was fortunate to have my business partner of many years - Hemal Thakkar - who helped a great deal in production under our banner, Playtime Creation.
I can tell you, I grew up with great coaching, and it had nothing to do with sports. I had great parents. I really got some great input from there. They were entrepreneurial, middle-class business people.
In the United States we have the great Harvard Business School, but America is the country with the greatest debt in the world.
Great investors need to have the right combination of intuition, business sense and investment talent.
Accessing capital to start a business can be a daunting process, especially for entrepreneurs who start out with a great idea, but have no real familiarity with the business world.
We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating. They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen.
I am a human being. I started out with virtually nothing. I worked my way up like so many businesspeople have and made ourselves great in this country. And that is what we have to make sure we preserve for our grandchildren and future generations all the way through.
I'm really not a great businessperson. I understand business, and I understand numbers, but I think what I understand more than that is people... Ultimately, I think businesses fail and people fail because they don't have their act together.
