I just wanted to be a businessman, and to me, the best way to understand business was to be an accountant.

I've always been comfortable thinking things through and doing it, more or less, my way. You can be as creative as you want, but if you're... unwilling to work on the details, to see those put into action, then creativity is just dreams, or worse, hallucinations.

American business would be run better today if there was more alignment between CEOs' interest and the company. For example, would the financial crisis of 2008 have occurred if the CEO of Lehman and Morgan Stanley and Goldman and Citibank had to take a very small percentage of every mortgage-backed security... or every loan they made?

With regard to electric vehicles, I am all for them because most of the incremental electricity needed to run those vehicles will come from gas-fired electric generation. However, I do not believe it is wise for America to substitute dependence on foreign oil for dependence on Chinese batteries.

Natural gas is a feedstock in basically every industrial process.

Natural gas is the one fuel that we have that's affordable, it's scaleable, it can replace coal over time, it can replace imported oil, can create American jobs.

Every day you use dozens of products that have strong chemicals in them, but remember, the only difference between poison and medicine is dosage.

I get mad at the New York-based environmentalists because if you were truly environmentalists you wouldn't have a storm surge system and a sanitary system hooked together here that requires you to close your beaches 10 times a year.

I think most people act in their self-interest.