“When we began Starbucks, what I wanted to try to do was to create a set of values, guiding principles, and culture.”

In this ever-changing society, the most powerful and enduring brands are built from the heart.

To be an enduring, great company, you have to build a mechanism for preventing or solving problems that will long outlast any one individual leader.

We woke up one day, and all the sudden Starbucks was in the middle of this political crossfire between the people who want to bring a gun into Starbucks and the people who want to prevent it. It is a very difficult, fragile situation.

Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy.

A great business has to have a conscience. You have to know who you are and who you are not.

At an early age, my mother gave me this feeling that anything is possible, and I believe that.

People want guidance, not rhetoric. They need to know what the plan of action is, and how it will be implemented. They want to be given responsibility to help solve the problem and authority to act on it.

Sometimes you have to create the thing you want to be part of.

But when you really believe-in yourself, in your dream-you just have to do everything you possibly can to take control and make your vision a reality. No great achievement happens by luck.

My parents really wanted me to get out of New York, be exposed to other people, other ways of life.

Europe has always represented a major strategic opportunity to achieve our goal of creating and building an enduring global brand.

We have no patent on anything we do and anything we do can be copied by anyone else. But you can’t copy the heart and the soul and the conscience of the company.

In life, you can blame a lot of people and you can wallow in self-pity or you can pick yourself up and say listen, I have to be responsible for myself.

The hardest thing about being a leader is demonstrating or showing vulnerability. And that has a lot to do with trust.

When you’re surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible.

This may sound a bit naive, but I got here by believing in big dreams.

The revolution of tenderness begins in the heart of the family.

Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.

Communism begins where atheism begins.

You can’t realize your dreams unless you have one to begin with.

Self-disciplined begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you don’t control what you think, you can’t control what you do. Simply, self-discipline enables you to think first and act afterward.

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

Our visions begin with our desires.

New Beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.