Quotes by Pierre Omidyar

A well-functioning microfinance bank can actually be a profitable business as well. So it became a perfect proof point that, through business, you can provide an experience that leads to individual self-empowerment.

Companies in Silicon Valley invest a lot in understanding their users and what drives user engagement.

To truly prepare for the unexpected, you've got to position yourself to keep a couple of options open so when the door of opportunity opens, you're close enough to squeeze through.

It is not really work if you are having fun.

You have to really believe in what you're doing, be passionate enough about it so that you will put in the hours and hard work that it takes to actually succeed there, and then you'll be successful.

In the early days of eBay, I articulated for the very first time this belief that people are basically good.

One of the things I tend to do is open myself up to a variety of voices. I try to expose myself to the kind of culture shock that occurs when you talk to people who speak a different language.

I started eBay as an experiment, as a side hobby basically, while I had my day job.

Be an enzyme -- a catalyst for change. As a slogan, I don't know if that's ever going to be right up there with Ich Bin Ein Berliner, or I Have A Dream, but there's a lot of truth to it.

What we say here every day is that our success is really based on our members' success, our community's success. We've created an infrastructure and laid some basic ground rules to create this marketplace.

By building a simple system, with just a few guiding principles, eBay was open to organic growth.

Microloans enable the poor to lift themselves out of poverty through entrepreneurship.

I was just pursuing what I enjoyed doing. I mean, I was pursuing my passion.

We believe that business can be a tool for social good.

We have technology, finally, that for the first time in human history allows people to really maintain rich connections with much larger numbers of people.

The personal wealth that's coming is absolutely secondary to the stories that I hear about our users who have given themselves some financial independence as well by starting businesses, and all the lives we've touched positively.

Build a platform -- prepare for the unexpected...you' ll know you're successful when the platform you've built serves you in unexpected ways.

I have always been of the opinion that the right kind of journalism is a critical part of our democracy.

What makes eBay successful.. the real value and the real power at eBay is the community. It's the buyers and sellers coming together and forming a marketplace.

Ebay's success as a company depends on the success of the community of sellers.

Microfinance initiatives are very high-touch models. The loan officer meets with local groups of borrowers every week, they share tips and techniques. There's a lot of training and learning that goes on, which adds to the cost of the model.

In order to access private capital, you have to provide competitive return on investment. In order to give competitive returns to investors, you've got to operate on a profitable basis and be thinking of yourself as a business.

You should pursue your passion. If you're passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.

My dad was a physician. As a kid, I remember driving around with him on weekends so he could do his rounds at the hospital and talk to patients. We'd spend time in the car talking about what was going on with them, their stories.

In terms of my belief that one individual can make a difference -- that belief comes from my parents.

My parents made me believe I could do anything I wanted to do. They were really into empowering me.

I developed an interest in supporting independent journalists in a way that leverages their work to the greatest extent possible, all in support of the public interest.

In the same way that you're driven in your business to keep innovating -- Facebook is a wonderful example of constant innovation -- think about doing that in philanthropy.

If you can get over this initial distrust that people have of strangers, you can do remarkable things.

I had the notion that, OK, so now we have all of this wealth, we could buy not only one expensive car, we could buy all of them. As soon as you realize that you could buy all of them, then none of them are particularly interesting or satisfying.

What I'm really focused on is connecting people around shared interests, so together they can make good stuff happen. I'm more focused on helping people discover their power as individuals, but through those connections with one another.

EBay's business is based on enabling someone to do business with another person, and to do that, they first have to develop some measure of trust, either in the other person or the system.

What makes eBay successful -- the real value and the real power at eBay -- is the community. It's the buyers and sellers coming together and forming a marketplace.

When I started eBay, it was a hobby, an experiment to see if people could use the Internet to be empowered through access to an efficient market. I actually wasn't thinking about it in terms of a social impact.

Advertisers don't want to put their ads next to the investigative story; it's extremely difficult to do that. And very few people today actually read those serious news stories on the Web now.

Technologists come at a problem from the point of view that the system is working a certain way, and if I engage in that system and actually change the rules of the system, I can make it work a different way.

When you have mass surveillance, it's impossible to meet the intent of the First Amendment because reporters can't talk to sources because sources are afraid to talk.

I'm a technologist by origin and by training, but I'm focused on philanthropy.

A lot of people don't just go ahead and try things.

News organisations that have been around a while have a lot of traditions and ways of doing things that may have served them for many years but perhaps make them less flexible in the digital era. As an entrepreneur, it just makes more sense to start something new.

As a philanthropist, I try to help people take ownership. Everything I've done is rooted in the notion that every human being is born equally capable. What people lack is equal opportunity.

I had always been interested in markets -- specifically, the theory that in financial markets, goods will trade at a fair value only when everyone has access to the same information.

In 1991, I co-founded my first start-up, Ink Development, which made software for an early tablet computer.

If you give people the opportunity to do the right thing, you'll rarely be disappointed.

You can invest in companies, you can help grow companies, you can be a venture capitalist -- and be a philanthropist at the same time.

I do like to fly under the radar. When I walk around town, the only people I want to recognise me and call me by my name are the folks at Starbucks.

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

In February of 1996, about six months after I created eBay, I started receiving a spate of complaints. Everyone was complaining about each other. I felt very much like I was a parent who had to adjudicate the brothers beating each other up.

Long-term sustainable change happens if people discover their own power.