The World According To A Little Serbian ImmigrantThe Quotable Milan Panic
Complied and Edited By
Obrad Kesic & Drina Rajic“ A long time ago I said: ‘Where I go, I want to be on top: I never disavowed that rule. I, the little immigrant from Serbia… number one.”
ON BEING AN IMMIGRANT AND AMERICA
“To be an immigrant and to be accepted and recognized means that I am part of a tremendous vision of a future where people will live like immigrants in the whole world and nobody will care where others come from as long as they contribute something to the life of everyone else. I think that is the American Way.”
- The Wizard: Millionaire Magicians of the American Way (1990)“ I was told that in this country, too, it is not possible to make something out of nothing. They were not right. One can make a lot out of nothing. As early as my first day in America, I realized that I would survive. While I was in Yugoslavia I believed in capitalism. But, I was a ‘capitalist’ without anything. Now, I was offered an opportunity to make money, to create, to advance.”
- The Serbian dream of Milan Panic (1992)
GOALS“Where I go into business, I have to be number one. Or, I just don’t get involved. It is my rule that whatever I do has to advance, to augment and to bring profit.”
- The Serbian dream of Milan Panic (1992)“My objectives are simple. We want to build a major worldwide health-care company. That’s what I’m going to be doing in the next ten years.”
- The Wizard: Millionaire Magicians of the American Way (1990)“Too much pain and too much tragedy have poured down on the Balkans. To establish peace in that region – that is the mission I am going to follow now and to which I am prepared to dedicate my life.”
- The Serbian dream of Milan Panic (1992)BUSINESS AND SUCCESS
“Wealth is what you have in your heart, in your soul, not in gold or bank books. Whoever is not rich in his soul is poor”
- The Serbian dream of Milan Panic (1992)“There is so little to say about me without the company. This is my life and I like it.”
-The Wizard: Millionaire Magicians of the American Way (1990)“Wall Street works in the following way: when the stock is up, you’re a genius but when it’s down, you’re a no-good bum.”
- Comment to Business Reporter (1990)“Everybody want to help you while you are poor, while you are an outside. But, the moment you succeed, everybody want to pull you down.”
- The Serbian dream of Milan Panic (1992)“They are mostly clowns. But a clown can kill you just the same as any warrior.”
- On his business opponents from a presentation to financial analysts
(1999)COMMUNISM
“It’s funny now, looking back on it thirty years later. If you are on a train, travelling only two hundred miles, you’re checked repeatedly by the police. You go abroad and the secret police call you to ask who you talked with on the corner of some street. Well then it happens. You start thinking three times before you open your mouth, because you can go to jail! In an instant! For nothing!
The Wizard: Millionaire Magicians of the American Way (1990)“I was also bothered with another aspect: I saw that we were living in a world without freedom, a single-direction world. I started to be afraid of it.”
A portrait of Leadership (1999)
THE BALKANS
“Our region is full of weapons. We need neither weapons nor the armies, but development and a better standard of living.”
The Serbian dream of Milan Panic (1992)“Truth be told, the only good thing in all of this is that we do not hold a patent on sick minds.”
NIN (1999)“ The world is not involved with us because they like the Balkans. We are a joke for them, and a black humor type of joke.
The Serbian dream of Milan Panic (1992)
MILOSEVIC“ He will do his job, and I will do mine. Let God help him if he tries to get in my way.
The Serbian dream of Milan Panic (1992)“It has been a fatal mistake to regard him as the solution, rather than the problem. Counting on him to enforce the Dayton accords or to bring about a peaceful solution to the Kosovo problem is like counting on the devil to eliminate sin.”
The Central European Economic Review (1999)“Everything he has done, he’s done only for one reason: To stay in power.”
CBS News: 60 Minutes II (1999)“He doesn’t believe he is guilty. Slobodan Milosevic keeps thinking that an international conspiracy is in question, the reason of the whole world against him.”
The Serbian dream of Milan Panic (1992)“In the end, if you keep in mind the scope of the tragedy that Milosevic has brought to the Serbian people, to himself and his family, I think that there is no court that could adequately judge him.”
NIN (1999)“ I am in favor of any kind of overthrow of (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic. He has brought great shame to our nation, more than any other leader in the history of Serbia.
Reporter Magazine (1999)PREDICTIONS
“The world on day will become like America. Everybody will be accepted everywhere. But the basis of that plan for a future world is going to be the American concept – not Russian, or communism.”
The Wizard: Millionaire Magicians of the American Way (1990)“In the long term, I believe, we will all be Europe without borders.”
NIN (1999)“However, the moment may well ripen for the kind of peacekeeping initiative I suggested. I do not think that nay of the Balkan leaders want more war, regardless of what they say in public. They are weary of war, fear that it could broaden and escalate, and would welcome your assistance in working out the compromise… I urge you to consider inviting all of the (former) Yugoslav leaders to meet with you in the United States, perhaps at Camp David.”
From a letter sent to President Clinton in November, 1994, almost one full year before the Dayton talks“ I speak correctly phonetically, but I just do it in my own way.”
