Larry Ellison Quotes
302 Larry Ellison Quotes
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[On being frugal at Oracle.] I’m very cheap at the office.
Larry Ellison
Checkmate!
Larry Ellison
Quality is absolutely the right strategy to kill our competition.
Larry Ellison
You can’t conform in business.
Larry Ellison
The only way if you adhere to conventional wisdom, and do everything else that everyone else does – you’re going to lose.
Larry Ellison
The only way to get ahead, to really get ahead. Is to be different.
Larry Ellison
[In 1998] I like putting myself in demanding, challenging situations.
Larry Ellison
I have to do the best I can possibly do.
Larry Ellison
Life is a miracle…
Larry Ellison
Being loved is more important than being admired.
Larry Ellison
I think we’re born slaves to reason. And it’s really reason that’s beaten out of us through a process of trying to please our teachers.
Larry Ellison
I think we have two fundamental drives in our life: we want to be loved and we want to please people. And we know how to think and we know how to reason. And these are often quite at odds.
Larry Ellison
It is my job to go out into the marketplace and win.
Larry Ellison
[When needing a different management team to cope with growth in 1990.] I had to ask people I had worked with for a decade… to leave. I had to fire people. That was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do in business. Asking a bunch of people to leave Oracle.
Larry Ellison
Think things out for yourself.
Larry Ellison
Come to your own judgements.
Larry Ellison
Don’t simply conform to conventional ways of thinking…
Larry Ellison
A lot of things are based on fashion. Even morality at times is based on fashion.
Larry Ellison
You really have to go back to first principles and think things out for yourself.
Larry Ellison
You have to think things out for yourself.
Larry Ellison
[In August 2006] The only thing more risky than moving to the next generation of technology is not moving to the next generation.
Larry Ellison
I'm a major in-the-moment person.
Larry Ellison
We pursued growth relentlessly. Growth was the center of our culture for a long time.
Larry Ellison
Someone once said that Bill [Gates] wants people to think he’s [Thomas] Edison and he’s really [John] Rockefeller.
Larry Ellison
[On Bill Gates.] There are very few people in the world who have his focus and endurance.
Larry Ellison
[In 1990] Absolute maximum growth is probably incompatible with maximum quality.
Larry Ellison
[In 2002] I used to practice what I jokingly referred to as ‘management by ridicule.’ People would be terrified to come into meetings.
Larry Ellison
[In 1991 surfing when the beach was closed. And catching a 13 foot wave.] For the first half second I thought: This is amazing. I couldn’t believe the acceleration of this wave.
Larry Ellison
[On his surfing accident going out of control.] Holy smokes. I knew I had to bail out of this wave before I got onshore or I was going to be maybe killed. So I duck. I go into a tuck and try to get out from underneath the wave. The wave took me down. It was taking my head right for the sand and would have snapped my neck like a twig, but I finally just rolled and got back onto my right shoulder. Within a couple of seconds I started hearing a sound in my ears that sounded like someone with a handful of shredded wheat, just crushing all this shredded wheat. I heard three bones fracturing in my shoulders. It was a very surreal experience. My board exploded into three pieces – one piece jammed into my neck and broke my neck – broke my sixteenth vertebra. Then I heard my ribs snapping one after another, and finally one of them went into a lung and punctured and collapsed my lung. When the wave finally subsided, my right shoulder was down where my waist was supposed to be.
Larry Ellison
[In a bike accident after his surfing accident.] The doctor who finally fixed it said it looked like a war wound, like I’d been shot with a high-powered rifle.
Larry Ellison
I knew eventually this would hit us – at some time we would invest for very rapid growth and we would get nailed. And when we hit the wall, we hit it very, very hard.
Larry Ellison
We were like an adolescent company. Our goal was growth, much like an adolescent’s. Every year we were older and twice as large.
Larry Ellison
[In May 2000] We have a chance to pass Microsoft and become the No. 1 software company. If I had said that two years ago, I would have been sedated and locked up. But now we’re the Internet and they are not.
Larry Ellison
I can’t tell you the number of versions of ‘Toy Story’ I saw before it came out. It eventually became a form of torture. I’d go over there and see the latest 10% improvement. Steve [Jobs] is obsessed with getting it right – both the story and the technology – and isn’t satisfied with anything less than perfection.
Larry Ellison
[In 1995 on saying to Steve Jobs that they could make a takeover bid for Apple and put Steve Jobs back as the head of Apple. He could line up $3 billion in financing.] I will buy Apple, you will get 25% of it right away for being CEO, and we can restore it to its past glory. [But Steve Jobs decided he was a not a hostile-takeover kind of guy.]
Larry Ellison
[On Steve Jobs explaining how he could get back into Apple without Larry having to buy it.] He explained his strategy, which was getting Apple to buy NeXT, then he would go on the board and be one step away from being CEO. But Steve, there’s one thing I don’t understand. If we don’t buy the company, how can we make any money? [‘Larry, this is why it’s really important that I’m your friend. You don’t need any more money.’ –
Steve Jobs] Well, I may not need the money, but why should some fund manager at Fidelity get the money? Why should someone else get it? Why shouldn’t it be us? [‘I think if I went back to Apple, and I didn’t own any of Apple, and you didn’t own any of Apple, I’d have the moral high ground.’ –
Steve Jobs] Steve, that’s really expensive real estate, this moral high ground. Look, Steve, you’re my best friend, and Apple is your company. I’ll do whatever you want.
Larry Ellison
[On Steve Jobs saying he was not plotting to take over Apple.] Anyone who spent more than a half hour with [Gil] Amelio would realize that he couldn’t do anything but self-destruct.
Larry Ellison
Steve’s [Jobs] the only one who can save Apple. I’m ready to help him the minute he says the word.
Larry Ellison
[On Steve Jobs requesting an airplane after he had been working at Apple for a $1 a year with no stock options.] Given what he’s accomplished, we should give him five airplanes!
Larry Ellison
[Later on Steve Jobs requesting an airplane after he had been working at Apple for a $1 a year with no stock options.] It was the perfect thank-you gift for Steve, who had saved Apple and gotten nothing in return.
Larry Ellison
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