Charles Schwab Quotes

I grew up in an era when money was not readily available. We were into the post-Depression years and World War II.

There was a guy by the name of Charles Schwab: actually, Charles M. Schwab. I read a lot about him, and I always hoped I was related, but I wasn’t. He was a steel magnate. He worked for J.P. Morgan; then he started Bethlehem Steel. But he had no children, unfortunately, and it turned out I wasn’t a relative.

I bought all the books, but I probably knew on the first day that law school wasn’t for me. I didn’t give up until about ten days. I don’t think I really told my father. I really didn’t like my father knowing my things were not successful.

Sometimes my mistake has been hesitancy about acting on the decisions I’ve made. When’s the best time to invest? It’s today, not tomorrow.

I remember, my first bicycle was very much a used bike. I wasn’t going to Wal-Mart, buying a flashy 10-speed bike from China. Are you kidding me?

You’ve always got to think about having some fixed income in your portfolio as well as equities.

I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.

I did all kinds of things as a young person to try to make money. I had a chicken operation – I sold chickens. I can remember going to high school football games as a ten-year-old and gathering Coca-Cola bottles, ’cause you’d turn them in and get a nickel. I wanted not to remain idle.

A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.

I was about thirteen when I started thinking about the stock market. My dad helped me a little bit. I’d see it in the ‘Santa Barbara News-Press.’ These prices would change every day – what was that all about?

We couldn’t buy Google on the IPO, but I knew I wanted to own it. I was gonna go big. It came out and went down a bit. I got distracted by something and didn’t get in.

As a young analyst just out of Stanford business school in the 1960s, I got to really understand what growth was about. Back then, you had to ask a customer to pay some money. That was the most important thing in getting a company off the ground.

I never knew the word ‘billion’ when I was a kid.

For as little as a thousand dollars, you can open an account at Schwab. I mean, it’s not a big barrier to entry.

I frankly think we in the financial service world believe we need appropriate kinds of regulations. No question about that. But when something like Dodd-Frank has been created, sort of in the mystery of night, it is a huge document. It’s vast. It weighs about 10 pounds when I carry it around.