Top 24 Quotes by Jeffrey R. Immelt

September 11 was horrific, but I've been through enough crises before that I had my own pattern as to how to collect facts, what a leader should do, how to communicate with people, how to set up operating mechanisms to work our way through it.

The one thing that people don't get about GE is that, to the people who work here, it's not a company. It's not just a job. You feel like you're part of a 120-year-old ever-growing, ever-improving family.

I think that if you run a big company, you've got to, four or five times a year, just say, 'Hey team, look, here's where we're going.' If you do it 10 times, nobody wants to work for you. If you do it zero times, you have anarchy.

You can stay too long in a job, that's for sure. But by the same token, in the 12 years I have been CEO of GE, there have been four CEOs of Toshiba. So there's too short a time to do it, and there's too long a time to do it.

I think we should have basically the same tax policy that Germany, Japan, the U.K., everybody else has, which is a tax rate in the mid-20s and no loopholes. Zero. The U.S. has the most antiquated tax system. And that means some people are going to pay more taxes, and some people are going to pay less.

I'd be lying if I didn't say there were days when I went back and said, 'I wish I'd done this. I should have done that. I handled this the wrong way.' But it's always in the motivation of getting better. I've never once looked in the mirror and said, 'Oh boy, can't do this one.'