45 Insightful Jack Ma Quotes

Jack Ma is known for being the founder of the e-commerce behemoth Alibaba.com. Starting the company from his apartment with 17 friends, he now has an estimated net worth of $28 Billion (as of 2016).

Jack Ma is a visionary. He’s also inspiring and stands out with his unique way of thinking. All businesses and entrepreneurs can gain something valuable from the wisdom he has to offer.

Below I’ve compiled 45 Jack Ma quotes that will give you an insight into how Jack thinks about business, competition, money and work ethic.

By reading them you’ll clearly be able to see what made him so successful in a difficult business environment.

45 Jack Ma Quotes

1. “If you’ve never tried, how will you ever know if there’s any chance?” – Jack Ma

2. “Hire the person best suited to the job, not the most talented. This can be a very painful lesson. There’s no point putting in a Boeing jet engine when you need to run a tractor.” – Jack Ma

3. “Intelligent people need a fool to lead them. When the team’s all a bunch of scientists, it is best to have a peasant lead the way. His way of thinking is different. It’s easier to win if you have people seeing things from different perspectives.” – Jack Ma

4. “I am a very simple guy, I am not smart. Everyone thinks that Jack Ma is a very smart guy. I might have a smart face but I’ve got very stupid brains.” – Jack Ma

5. “If you don’t give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.” – Jack Ma

6. “If we are a good team and know what we want to do, one of us can defeat 10 of them.” – Jack Ma

7. “It doesn’t matter if I failed. At least I passed the concept on to others. Even if I don’t succeed, someone will succeed.” – Jack Ma

8. “If we go to work at 8 a.m. and go home at 5 p.m., this is not a high-tech company and Alibaba will never be successful. If we have that kind of 8-to-5 spirit, then we should just go and do something else. ” – Jack Ma

9. “You should learn from your competitor but never copy. Copy, and you die.” – Jack Ma

10. “Alibaba is not just a job. It’s a dream. It’s a cause. Let the Wall Street investors curse us if they want.” – Jack Ma

11. “If you want to grow, find a good opportunity. Today, if you want to be a great company, think about what social problem you could solve.” – Jack Ma

12. “In carrying out e-commerce, the most important thing is to keep doing what you are doing right now with passion, to keep it up.” – Jack Ma

13. “No matter how tough the chase is, you should always have the dream you saw on the first day. It’ll keep you motivated and rescue you (from any weak thoughts).” – Jack Ma

14. “Never ever compete on prices, instead compete on services and innovation.” – Jack Ma

15. “We’re never in lack of money. We lack people with dreams, (people) who can die for those dreams.” – Jack Ma

16. “Instead of learning from other people’s success, learn from their mistakes. Most of the people who fail share common reasons (to fail) whereas success can be attributed to various different kinds of reasons.” – Jack Ma

17. “Help young people. Help small guys. Because small guys will be big. Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds, and when they grow up, they will change the world.” – Jack Ma

18. “If you don’t give up, you still have a chance. Giving up is the greatest failure.” – Jack Ma

19. “You never know how much can you do in your life.” – Jack Ma

20. “You never know that the things you’re doing are that meaningful to society.” – Jack Ma

21. “You’ve to make consumers smart. An e-commerce portal doesn’t sell a product at cheaper rates, instead an offline shop sells it at a costlier prices.” – Jack Ma

22. “You’ve got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision.” – Jack Ma

23. “Today, making money is very simple. But making sustainable money while being responsible to the society and improving the world is very difficult.” – Jack Ma

24. “If the customer loves you, the government will have to love you.” – Jack Ma

25. “Never ever do business with the government. Be in love with them, never marry them.” – Jack Ma

26. “When we have money, we start making mistakes.” – Jack Ma

27. “We should never finish a 20 year program in two year.” – Jack Ma

28. “It’s very difficult to know the outside world, but you know yourself. You know your need and what you want. If I know myself better, I can change myself to meet the outside world.” – Jack Ma

29. “Life is so short, so beautiful. Don’t be so serious about work. Enjoy the lives.” – Jack Ma

30. “Opportunity lies in the place where the complaints are.” – Jack Ma

31. “I’m not a tech guy. I’m looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people’s eyes.” – Jack Ma

32. “My job is to help more people have jobs.” – Jack Ma

33. “I don’t want to be liked. I want to be respected.” – Jack Ma

34. “The very important thing you should have is patience.” – Jack Ma

35. “Put the customers first, the employees second, and the shareholders third.” – Jack Ma

36. “If Alibaba doesn’t get bigger and more successful than Walmart or Microsoft, I will regret it for the rest of my life. Our predecessors invested in us, it is therefore our (this generation’s) responsibilities to do better than them.” – Jack Ma

37. “The business schools teach a lot of skills about how to make money and how to run a business. But I want to tell people that if you want to run a business, you have to run the value first, to serve the others, to help the others – that’s the key.” – Jack Ma

38. “I think crazy is good! We are crazy but not stupid! If everyone agrees with me and if everybody believes in our idea is good – we will have no chance.” – Jack Ma

39. “I use Thai Chi philosophy in business: Calm down, There’s always a way out and keep yourself balanced, and meanwhile, don’t try to kill your competitors.” – Jack Ma

40. “I believe when you have $1 million, that’s your money – when you have $20 million, you start to have a problem. When you have $1 billion, that’s not your money, that’s the trust society gave you. They believe you can manage the money better than the government and others.” – Jack Ma

41. “I find that when a person makes a mistake or fails, if he or she always complains or blames others, that person will never come back from the failure. But if the person checks inside, this person has hope.” – Jack Ma

42. “Today, people write about the successful stories of Alibaba. And I really don’t think we were so smart, we made so many mistakes and we were so stupid at times. So, someday, the book I personally really will want to write about is Alibaba’s 1001 mistakes. These are the things people should remember and people should learn.” – Jack Ma

43. “I want to change history, do something important in my life, and influence individuals like we have with millions of small businesses on Alibaba. Then they love and respect you because you made their life important.” – Jack Ma

44. “I try to make myself happy, no, because I know that if I’m not happy, my colleagues are not happy and my shareholders are not happy and my customers are not happy.” – Jack Ma

45. “Never give up! Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine. If you give up tomorrow, you will never see the sunshine.” – Jack Ma

Which of these Jack Ma quotes is your favourite? Let me know in the comments below.