Carlos Slim Helu Quotes

120 Carlos Slim Helu Quotes

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[In September 2008] We have a healthy position. We know there is a crisis and it will be a difficult and tough crisis and nobody knows how deep, how long. But our position is to be healthy, financially healthy… and we have a policy of conservative dividends.
Carlos Slim Helu

I think the combination of non-profit organizations like the foundations and profit businesses can work together in some areas.
Carlos Slim Helu

[November 2011] There are not good and bad times for the people who have to work and have the means to work.
Carlos Slim Helu

[On Europe in November 2011] Developed countries have tried to give a state of welfare to the people especially early retirement and other expenses… I think they need to make structural changes…
Carlos Slim Helu

[On only using computers in his car and in his mobile phone and not on his desk with a preference for still seeing physical paper] I’m more trained to newspapers. I’m more trained to numbers. The numbers talk you know. You see numbers and you know what is happening.
Carlos Slim Helu

I follow numbers on papers.
Carlos Slim Helu

I want our countries to get developed. I think we are near to break the barrier of our development…
Carlos Slim Helu

At $15,000 [average earnings/person] you are already creating a big middle class and you are educating more people and creating bigger markets. That sustains the growth.
Carlos Slim Helu

You’re making a big mistake if you don’t give young people opportunities and hope for studies or jobs.
Carlos Slim Helu

[In October 2011] I think one of the problems of the monetary and fiscal policy is that the governments are putting all their resources in the financial economy instead of into the real economy. My activities are in the real economy.
Carlos Slim Helu



[On 2011] We are in telecommunications, we are in financial institutions, working with credit. Also, we work in insurance, mining and in building infrastructure and construction.
Carlos Slim Helu

[On how to fix the Europe crisis in October 2011] I really do believe that the mistakes I see are from the governments’ structural problems, because they have a lot of fiscal deficits and fiscal taxes. They don’t make enough to cover all their expenses, what they’re spending.
Carlos Slim Helu

To think that happiness comes from buying things is crazy. That happiness come because you have many material issues - to have 20 cars or 30 cars or the biggest one and 40 watches and - I think that's not happiness.
Carlos Slim Helu

First of all you need to know the business. After that you know the business, you can -- the numbers tell you what is happening. You can read with the numbers.
Carlos Slim Helu

Some people are very good with letters and others have… numbers…
Carlos Slim Helu

I think that anything that has privileges have responsibility and all people that is clear about their responsibility has compromise. All this is responsibility and compromise. Compromise and responsibility not only for me and my family, but also the management team…
Carlos Slim Helu

Privileges have responsibility…
Carlos Slim Helu

We don't take anything when we pass away, and we need to do with the sense of responsibility.
Carlos Slim Helu

When I was very young, maybe 12 years, I began to make investments.
Carlos Slim Helu

First I opened a check account. I looked at the -- I looked that there was nothing of yield. So I bought some bonds. It was a bond. When I bought this bond it was duplicated in 10 years. I think it was 10 percent.
Carlos Slim Helu



Then I understand compound interests in those times and then I think at 14 or something like that or 13, I bought stocks. I follow investment, but also my father, he began to make -- we have order with the money. In Mexico, we say you have money for the week to spend.
Carlos Slim Helu

[In 2010] We're focusing… in telecommunication, financing and mining, retail.
Carlos Slim Helu

At this time of my life my challenge is to, using the foundations and some of the efforts of the companies, try to make changes in Latin America.
Carlos Slim Helu

[In 2010] By the profit business I am now focusing in real estate developments, but mainly mining and the other areas of financing and telecommunications. I follow what is happening, but I am not in the operation.
Carlos Slim Helu

My father passed away when I was 13 years old. I was very young.
Carlos Slim Helu

[On his brothers and sisters] Used to be six, three boys and three boys. I am the fifth. Now we are only living an older brother and me. We are the only two now and I have also six children, three boys and three girls.
Carlos Slim Helu

[In 2010] We don't have corporate offices until now. We used to have them in the factories. The offices of the company were in the factories, not in another corporate building.
Carlos Slim Helu

[On buying up big in a crisis in 1982] I have cash, I have size and I can buy many things that were racy because everyone was selling and this was a very difficult year. We were in debt crisis in our country… the interest rate went to 21 percent, the prime rate. The inflation was two digits.
Carlos Slim Helu

[On giving a man a fish or teaching him how to fish] When a little boy comes to us for $1,000, you don't educate him well.
Carlos Slim Helu

[On his children being taught the importance of frugality] My children, first of all, the three children sleep in the same bed. Not same bed, in the same room, same bedroom my three boys and also my three girls… Not to have his own bed, his own bedroom, his own bathroom. His own everything.
Carlos Slim Helu



When you are convinced what to do and what you need to do, it's not hard to do that…
Carlos Slim Helu

[On being able to have a house ten times the size of what he currently has] What would I do with 10 times the size? I would lose myself. Like I say, I prefer the open spaces, the gardens, the breeze. Also when you have a big place, you don't see your family, never. You don't meet each other. [On his house] I don't have any desire to have something bigger.
Carlos Slim Helu

You cannot do anything without human capital…
Carlos Slim Helu

Wealth should be best to create more wealth.
Carlos Slim Helu

Sometimes when you don't have anything, you are looking to find things. And when you are looking to have things, you always have [to have] something more and more and more… I think that's a wrong way to live.
Carlos Slim Helu

Its' like a boy, a little boy that have a toy and then he get[s] another toy; he won't be happy with toys if you give him toys and toys and toys. The boys will ask for more and more and they will not play with the toy. They will - that's not the way to - the way to see life.
Carlos Slim Helu

Family is not an obstacle; it's a support. When people think that you go for family or for business, or for family or to be a doctor, or to family or be a something, I don't think that they are incompatible. I think they are very complimentary and supportive.
Carlos Slim Helu

With good perspective of history we can have a better understanding of the past and present, and thus a clear vision of the future.
Carlos Slim Helu

When there is a recession and your competition does not invest, they are giving you the advantage.
Carlos Slim Helu

To think that happiness comes from buying things is crazy.
Carlos Slim Helu



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