James Goldsmith Quotes
101 James Goldsmith Quotes (Sir James Goldsmith, Jimmy Goldsmith, James Michael Goldsmith)
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If you can find quasi unanimity in the stock market, you can do the opposite and be almost certain of success.
James Goldsmith
[As a 20 year old being asked what he wanted to do with his life.] I’m going to be a millionaire.
James Goldsmith
If you see a bandwagon, it’s too late to get on it.
James Goldsmith
I haven’t had a desk for twenty years. I don’t like the idea of sitting behind one.
James Goldsmith
Shareholders, if they’re intelligent will motivate management by making them shareholders so as to align interest.
James Goldsmith
Each generation has a duty to commit to a contract between the past, the present and the future.
James Goldsmith
[On professors not adapting their ideas in a changing marketplace.] As far as I’m concerned the biggest single handicap a person can have is to go to University.
James Goldsmith
There can be nothing worse than a person who’s ambitions have been satisfied.
James Goldsmith
[To
Al Dunlap] My dear boy, I’m a very clever fellow. You do 95 percent of the work and get 5 percent of the return. I do 5 percent of the work and I get 95 percent of the return. Aren’t I a clever fellow for hiring you?
James Goldsmith
[To
Al Dunlap.] We will work out a deal. [‘Yes, Sir James.’ -Al Dunlap] Call me James. No, no – Jimmy. You must call me Jimmy because that is what my friends call me.
James Goldsmith
[To
Al Dunlap.] My dear boy, you and I have an enormous respect for money because we had to make it. We had to live by our wits.
James Goldsmith
[To
Al Dunlap on never second guessing him.] It’s amazing how we always come to the same conclusions.
James Goldsmith
[To
Al Dunlap on never ordering him to do something.] I would appreciate it if you would look at this.
James Goldsmith
[On what he called
Al Dunlap.] Rambo in Pinstripes.
James Goldsmith
[To
Al Dunlap on the ‘Rambo in Pinstripes’ compliment.] You’re like Rambo. You go into a situation that’s totally chaotic and you clean it up, fight the good fight, and when you leave, you’ve won the war.
James Goldsmith
[On
Al Dunlap receiving a large advance on his future salary being the biggest cheque that he had ever seen but being drawn at a bank he had never heard of (Brown Brothers Harriman.). And then asking James Goldsmith ‘Are you sure this check is not going to bounce?’ – Al Dunlap.] My dear boy, that is where the blue bloods bank. It is not going to bounce.
James Goldsmith
I do not accept, that economic growth is the principle measure of the success of nations.
James Goldsmith
The purpose of the economy is to serve the true needs of society: prosperity, social stability and contentment.
James Goldsmith
The secret is to create new ambitions the whole time.
James Goldsmith
I went out to get the best people I could find, and I managed to get them.
James Goldsmith
The only way to work out a practical set of beliefs in business is by the constant interaction of theory and practice.
James Goldsmith
[On dropping out of school at the age of 16.] A man of my means should not remain a schoolboy, even at Eton.
James Goldsmith
I was breaking club rules and they hated me for it.
James Goldsmith
I need to believe in something in order to do it.
James Goldsmith
The dead hand of the bureaucrat does not produce growth. It does not produce innovation. It produces complacency, ossification and decline.
James Goldsmith
Dynamism is usually the result of disequilibrium. My disequilibrium comes from the very fact that I’m a foreigner… I’m a Jew to the Catholics, a Catholic to the Jews, an Englishman to the French, and a Frenchman to the English. I’ve always been neither one thing nor the other – which is an unsettling thing to be.
James Goldsmith
The European Commission seems to confuse the profitability of corporations with the health of the national economy.
James Goldsmith
It is the poor in the rich countries who will subsidise the rich in the poor countries.
James Goldsmith
[On whether he learns more during a business triumph or crisis.] We learn more during a crisis.
James Goldsmith
You learn effectively by trying things.
James Goldsmith
[On his initial business ideas.] As you tested the ideas - if you have a sense of survival, you change them if they turn out to be wrong.
James Goldsmith
[Due to not being able to adapt their ideas in a changing environment.] Professors are structurally bound to be wrong.
James Goldsmith
If I had been teaching as opposed to running a business, I would have come in with a set of ideas, and I was sufficiently persuasive to get good people to adopt those ideas. And when it turned out that all those ideas were wrong – you change them.
James Goldsmith
If I had of been a teacher, if I’d been in business school I would have stuck to the same ideas all my life. I would have been teaching total nonsense all my life.
James Goldsmith
You can only have someone who knows anything if you can mix both theory and practice so that you’re constantly testing your ideas in the marketplace – in real life. And then adapting your ideas as you go along. A professor never does, therefore as far as I’m concerned the biggest single handicap a person can have is to go to University.
James Goldsmith
[On conventional wisdom and new ideas.] You quickly see if it works or fails and you adapt it.
James Goldsmith
[On education.] The old system of apprenticeship was the best system of all. If you wanted to learn something you learned about it in reality, you don’t learn about it in theory.
James Goldsmith
Theory on it’s own is thoroughly misleading and damaging, it’s got to be tested.
James Goldsmith
You should be learning theory but testing it constantly.
James Goldsmith
It’s a constant learning process…
James Goldsmith
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