It has been nothing short of a bumpy ride for Travis Kalanick but we still can’t get enough of him. Kalanick’s controversies began long before Uber started ticking off cab companies across the globe. His first venture, Scour.com, morphed from a web search engine to a successful peer-to-peer file exchange–that is, until 2000 when more than 30 media companies sued Scour for $250 million for copyright infringement.

No stranger to opposition, Kalanick is not afraid to rub people the wrong way in the name of pursuing his vision. Uber faced a battle with the government back in 2010 when it was called UberCab and things are not very different now with recent women’s safety issues and a ban against the company in Germany.

How does the brash, young entrepreneur keep his conviction in the face of criticism and resistance? Check out the five quotes below from Kalanick himself.

1. On holding your ground:
“Stand by your principles and be comfortable with confrontation. So few people are, so when the people with the red tape come, it becomes a negotiation.”–January 25, 2013, Wall Street Journal

2.On dominating the market:
“What we maybe should’ve realized sooner was that we are running a political campaign and the candidate is Uber. And this political race is happening in every major city in the world. And because this isn’t about a democracy, this is about a product, you can’t win 51 to 49. You have to win 98 to 2.”–November 4, 2014. Vanity Fair

3. On pioneering your business model before someone else does:
“If there is to be a low-cost Uber, Uber will be the low-cost Uber.”–January 25, 2013, Wall Street Journal

4.On taking charge of disruption and innovation:
“It’s not Pinterest where people are putting up pins. You’re changing the way cities work, and that’s fundamentally a third rail.”–May 28, 2014, Code Conference

5. On not letting go of his successful company:
“You’re asking somebody who has a wife and is really happily married, ‘So, what’s your next wife going to be like?’ And I’m like, 'What?’”–November 4, 2014, Vanity Fair