Howard Schultz Quotes

At its core, I believe leadership is about instilling confidence in others

One way to describe the American Dream is as a promise — a promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Inherent to that pursuit, I believe, is having access to opportunities like education and good jobs, healthcare and ownership, support from family and friends, and generosity from strangers. Opportunity shows up as luck, but is also embedded into our social, governmental, and corporate constructs.

I am not ashamed of the wealth I have accumulated through Starbucks’ success. But I have never been interested in broadcasting my personal net worth. I’m very private in that regard. Money is not a measure by which I judge myself or want others to judge me. At the end of the day, we must each close our eyes and find peace with the decisions we have made. Among the things I have come to understand is how money can too easily amplify the best and worst of human nature. People with vast wealth are not immune to the heartbreaks of life, some of which are brought about by that wealth. There are also emotional aches that no amount of money can possibly ease. And while money can afford us our dreams, it can also imbue our failures with the destructive breadth of a tsunami.

Success should not be measured in dollars: It’s about how you conduct the journey, and how big your heart is at the end of it.

A founder's perspective is unique.

Entrepreneurs are builders, and the lens through which I view Starbucks and the marketplace is somewhat different from what it would be if I were a professionally schooled manager.

Believe in your dreams and dream big. And then after you've done that, dream bigger!

Think like a person of action; act like a person of thought. The best minute I spend is the one I invest in people.

At the very heart of being a merchant is a desire to tell a story by making sensory, emotional connections. Once, twice, or 16,000 times.

Kiss my ass, ya shiksa!

Ihave come to believe that people must not stand by in the face of human distress and broken systems. And if these two predicaments are intertwined — if human suffering is the result of others abdicating their responsibilities, or showing a lack of respect for another person — it becomes what can only be described as an injustice.

The faults of history cannot be undone, but if we confront them we can begin to learn, change the present, and create a better future. Discussion is a good place to start, but talking can never be enough.

If you examine a butterfly according to the laws of aerodynamics, it shouldn’t be able to fly. But the butterfly doesn’t know that, so it flies.

Life is a sum of all your choices,

Starbucks is in every state. Whether people like the company or not, we are an undeniable presence in communities, on the ground across America. I always tried to spend as much time as I could on that ground and in our stores, talking to partners and customers — and listening more than I spoke. Among the things I’ve learned is that the cliché is true: most people do share the same desires — to be valued, to be understood, to be loved, to have a chance to go after our dreams, however humble or audacious those dreams may be. Beyond that, I’ve come to believe that the majority of people have potential that is easy to overlook, but that when tapped is boundless. Most people I have met in America want to be in control of their own fate. They just need a chance.

For me, the idea of a “third place” is not just something that exists between four walls. It is a mind-set. A way to exist in the world. That’s why I set out to build a profitable business that also expressed a core ethos: that people of all kinds can come together and uplift one another.