Cowan Quotes & Sayings

A good portfolio manager knows which companies to keep and which ones to let go. Many a GP has struggled with portfolio companies that cannot meet their value-creation milestones, or raise additional follow-on rounds of capital, or generate target returns in a time span of, say, five to seven years. The faster you recognize those losses, the better it is."
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"As David Cowan says, "Just focus on your top five - the rest is distraction." The harder part of the investor's discipline is to know when to quit."
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"You have to constantly scan all of those things and be willing to adjust your own sense of what's a reasonable outcome and move the company into a position where it has the maximum chance to succeed. "
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"Time is your enemy: Portfolio companies always take twice as much capital and twice as long to exit. Early-stage companies rarely meet milestones as planned and always burn cash faster than anticipated. — Mahendra Ramsinghani

We write the earth we stand upon. — Laura K. Cowan

Positive reviews are energizing. Negative reviews are teaching moments and the writer must pay attention, gleaning what is helpful and ignoring the personal jabs. — Liz Cowan

As I get older, the more I don't want my life to be emotionally out of balance in the way it was in my twenties. — Elliot Cowan

When he [Franklin Roosevelt] ultimately does not get the Republican Party nomination and decides to start his new Bull Moose Party, he does, for the first time, let black delegates be part of the party from elsewhere in the country. — Geoffrey Cowan

Go back to bed, Cowan. I want no promises from you. — Sandi Layne

When NBC News first assigned me to the Barack Obama campaign, I must confess my knees quaked a bit ... I wondered if I was up to the job. I wondered if I could do the campaign justice. — Lee Cowan

And so there are a lot of bad things. And in this campaign, if there's somebody you don't think should be nominated, if you think there's a coarseness to the campaign that's horrible, if you think it's creating voices around the world that seem to speak for America and damages in the world, you may say it's pretty horrible. On the other hand - what's the reverse? — Geoffrey Cowan

So, in Kennedy's case, he was a Catholic. And people thought after the Al Smith election and so forth that a Catholic couldn't win in the United States. But when he was able to win in West Virginia, he proved that a Catholic could win, even in a heavily Protestant state. — Geoffrey Cowan

Cowan son of Branieucc, you're the only one of my people that I know for sure still lives. — Sandi Layne

My heart is schizophrenic. — Lesley Anne Cowan

My story isn't beautiful or tragic. It's just another story about a cursed girl living a shitty life. — Lesley Anne Cowan

I think Roosevelt proves himself to be the ultimate political force in this book. He really wasn't for primaries until he realized it was the only way in which he could challenge a sitting president then it becomes his crusade, is to create the primaries and to call for the people to rule. — Geoffrey Cowan

The reverse is a system in which you basically let people who were leaders in one way or another - people sometimes decried as party bosses, people who are part of special interests make the decision. And I think that's a worse system than the one we have. — Geoffrey Cowan

There's no stopping the soul that radiates out and around us, any more than one can stop the sweet perfume of a rose. You could, of course, hold your nose. But the rose will continue to exude its rich fragrance, even while you suffocate. — Thomas Dale Cowan

You can't just stop loving someone just like that, you know. You can't just turn it off. — Lesley Anne Cowan

Why do adults have to diminish everything by feeling they need to end meetings with a false positive? It's so selfish. They say it not because they believe it, but because it helps them feel some kind of accomplishment when they walk away. Like they've done their job. But what do they leave behind?
It's like when teachers tell Tyler that he should be a lawyer because he's good at arguing, but meanwhile he can't pass grade nine. No one wants to say he's stupid, or that he's probably going to end up in jail like his brother, so they fill his head with these stupid dreams until he's eighteen, with no credits and totally messed up for life. I say, tell the truth, squash the dream, and stop with the second chances. — Lesley Anne Cowan

I've done some bits of shockingly bad TV that have never been shown, or at least I hope they've never been shown ... Please don't dig them out! — Elliot Cowan

Spirituality is natural, personal, and rooted in direct experience. There is no such thing as secondhand spirituality. No one else's spirituality can serve as substitute for your own. — David Cowan

FOR THAT WHICH BEFALLETH THE SONS OF MEN BEFALLETH BEASTS; AS THE ONE DIETH, SO DIETH THE OTHER; YEA, THEY ALL HAVE ONE BREATH; SO THAT A MAN HATH NO PREEMINENCE ABOVE A BEAST: FOR ALL IS VANITY. FOR — Robert Cowan

Characters in TV and theatre tend to experience a lot of conflict, so I push myself through sport to physical and emotional levels that hurt so I've some other reference for extreme experience that isn't me shouting at my girlfriend or my mum. It's a way of controlling the uncontrollable. — Elliot Cowan

You don't have to drink this," I said, handing him the champagne. "But Sandy might like it".
"No,no. Come on, let's have some," he grinned, popping the cork, taking a swig from the bottle and passing it back. He [HST] rarely failed to show his appreciation of someone appreciating him, which is an admirable trait. — Jay Cowan

In the design of fission reactors man was not an innovator but an unwitting imitator of nature. — George Cowan

Plant spirit medicine is the shaman's way with plants. It recognizes that plants have spirit and that spirit is the strongest medicine. Spirit can heal the deepest reaches of the heart and soul. — Elliot Cowan

But he [Franklin Roosevelt] specifically prohibits any black participation from the Deep South, something which just infuriates people who'd been his supporters and who'd believed in him and resides that he is just shockingly abandoned the right of the people to rule. It's a pretty horrible story in that respect. — Geoffrey Cowan

Tommy and Adam Cowan, over at Markdale, are twins; and they're both cross-eyed. So I s'posed that was what being twins meant. — L.M. Montgomery

The truth was that the sky didn't discriminate. It covered all of them in this graceful, inexplicable splendor. No matter what they had done. — Laura K. Cowan

What we consider typical of the male is a question I ask myself quite often - it's relevant to my life as an actor and as a man. — Elliot Cowan

I didn't want to get into acting just to play bystanders. I feel a bystander enough in my own life. And I do think that theatre can contribute to a certain analysis and commentary on our own world. — Elliot Cowan

Old soul." I laughed. "You're Thirty."
"It's not the years, it's the experience," he paused. — Maria V. Snyder

Even though momentarily I thought about being a doctor, I was always involved in theatre and did a drama degree. I just didn't have the guts to go, 'Yes, I'm going to be an actor,' until I was probably 21. — Elliot Cowan

I've not been distracted by a long-running TV show or visits to America for pilot season. — Elliot Cowan

There is nothing safer than flying - it's crashing that is dangerous. — Theo Cowan

To picture Roosevelt as a man at this time in his life - he felt he was old. He was 53 years old, feeling lonely and irrelevant. And all of a sudden, he takes on this campaign, and it becomes a crusade for popular government. And he ultimately goes on fire in the campaign, but he discovers he's up against all the old machine tactics that he used to use himself, and he has to let the public get involved. And he energizes the public through the most extreme kind of rhetoric, which truly brings him into the streets and onto his side. — Geoffrey Cowan

Reagan, people claimed, was too old to run for president and to be elected. But he proved himself such a vigorous campaigner in the primary system that he overcame those beliefs. — Geoffrey Cowan

I do revel slightly in the fact that I am what I am - an English, middle-class, public-school-educated bloke. There is a reputation with that of being slightly stiff, but whoever gets to know me will see some other element - whether it be vulnerable or silly or camp. — Elliot Cowan

I'm still very much about being an actor. That's why I'm not married with kids. — Elliot Cowan

Socrates repeatedly emphasized the point that moral knowledge is not mere acquisition of information but personal change. To know the good is to do it, Socrates declared. That is, if you really know the right thing to do in a situation, then your behavior will prove it. To act immorally is to prove your ignorance. — Steven B. Cowan

Somehow, the agenda has been put into the form of talking about a set of transitions from state A, the present, to a state B that's sustainable. The problem is that there is no such state. You have to assume that the transitions are going to continue forever and ever and ever. You have to talk about systems that are continuously dynamic, and that are embedded in environments that themselves are continuously dynamic. — George Cowan

My heart is a schizophrenic. One sentence is about how I hate him. The next is about how much I love him. It goes on like that, back and forth, pacing. — Lesley Anne Cowan

You know, the primary process itself is very confusing. But in the end, I guess I believe what Winston Churchill said, which is that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. And that phrase of his, which I always have previously thought to be kind of acute, more recently I've thought of it in this way, to say well, you know what, he's also saying it's the worst form of government - except for all of the others. — Geoffrey Cowan

When reading, one needs to remember that poets and philosophers are not prescribing courses of action but exploring aspects of existence. — Louise Cowan

The different human peoples did not evolve out of a common ancestor; they were each born out of the womb of their own homeland. We appeared in different parts of the world at the same time. Each group was as much a part of their environment as the other animals and plants of the region. — Eliot Cowan

And of course, in the case of Barack Obama, had he not won primaries - and particularly the heavily important caucus in Iowa - if the public hadn't shown that they were prepared to vote for a black president, we wouldn't have one today. — Geoffrey Cowan

Now I am not being critical here, — Robert Cowan

Mystical insight and enlightenment occur when the veil between the worlds is lifted, the worlds are bridged, the gap closes, and we cross over. — Tom Cowan

People often ask why I write romance. It's because I believe in heroes and heroines who, after fighting their way through often-formidable obstacles, are rewarded with a happy ending. When the story's over, their future is just beginning and I really like that idea. — Debra Cowan

We shouldn't let the Republicans off the hook. Theodore Roosevelt, we learned from Jeff Cowan's new book, was just as bad as certainly [Louis] Brandeis was, or many Democrats were on the question of segregation. — Jeffrey Rosen

If there was one thing Sam understood, it was guilt. It didn't have to be logical; oftentimes it wasn't. It
sawed at your gut relentlessly, tediously, until you wore it like a scar. — Debra Cowan

At a party in L.A., I met this middle-aged gentleman who I was talking to for ages when I asked, 'So, what do you do?' Turns out I was speaking to legendary music producer Quincy Jones, who worked on Michael Jackson's hits. And there was little old me rattling on - I was so embarrassed. — Elliot Cowan