Ross Perot Quotes
120 Ross Perot Quotes
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Money is the most overrated thing in the world.
Ross Perot
[On purchasing the Magna Carta for $1.5 million] My lawyer, Tom Luce found it for me in England. When he was ready to come home with it, he asked me if I wanted security guards on it and all that, I said, ‘Hell, stick it in your briefcase.’
Ross Perot
So many people spend their lives chasing money and end up as the richest men in the cemetery. I don’t want to be like that.
Ross Perot
I’m a product of this country and I feel I have an obligation to the American people to do all I can to make this a better country – not just build a personal empire.
Ross Perot
When you have been as fortunate as I have been you certainly can contribute more than people who are just trying to make ends meet. You bet.
Ross Perot
[On helping public projects] I’m just a guy standing there with a grease gun. I can lubricate their idea with financial encouragement.
Ross Perot
I want to put my money where my intentions are.
Ross Perot
When I came to Dallas, everything I owned was in the trunk of the car and I feel personally that I have always been rich in the things that count. I’ve had wonderful parents and I have a magnificent wife. I have great children. That’s real wealth. Young people who make their money their god are inevitably in for a big disappointment.
Ross Perot
[On leaving IBM] When I was just sitting around not knowing what to do, wishing I had something to do and I was in a barber shop reading an old Reader’s Digest and it had these little one-liners at the bottom of the page. Thoreau: ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ I said: ‘There I am.’ So that’s when I decided to start EDS, I didn’t know whether it would work or not, but I just had to try.
Ross Perot
[On starting EDS – Electronic Data Services] Nobody would invest, and that is the story of my success. My wife, my mother and my sister were the board of directors. I invested $1,000 of my own money, and that is all I ever put in.
Ross Perot
If we had set out to use EDS simply as a vehicle to make money, I don’t thin we would have been successful at all. Instead we set out to build a great company made up of great people.
Ross Perot
I’m all for unions, but we don’t need ‘em.
Ross Perot
We now expect life to be so extraordinarily good to us that we must be paid $20 an hour for a job that you could train a monkey to do – or we think the world is being unfair. The real lesson is that, if you give a lot to the world, the world will give a lot to you.
Ross Perot
We don’t care who you are. We don’t care where you come from. We don’t care where you went to school. We don’t care what color you are, what race, what sex, what religion. Young people will say, ‘Do you care about anything?’ And I’ll say, ‘You bet. I care about what you can do. I care about what you’ve done lately. Because this is a cross-country run, it’s not a 100 yard dash; one quick race is not a business career.
Ross Perot
One of our philosophies is that we fire people. We fired those who thought our objectives were too Boy-Scoutish and would not support them.
Ross Perot
I don’t care where they stand. The man I worry about is the one who hasn’t taken a position.
Ross Perot
Only in America would you have a war, get it over with and have all the heroes either be generals or politicians.
Ross Perot
In war there is no substitute for victory.
Ross Perot
We in Texas have to decide. Do we want our kids to entertain us on Friday nights at football games, or do we want them to be winners for the rest of their lives?
Ross Perot
If people in Texas want to be preoccupied with winning on Friday night as opposed to having children that win all their lives, that is their right as a free people.
Ross Perot
[On Texas public schools] We have got the darndest collection of indoor field houses, indoor swimming pools, Astroturf stadiums, electric cleat cleaners, towel warmers, and you-name-it you ever saw.
Ross Perot
[When he was GM’s largest individual shareholder and director] I’m not going to rest until we’re shipping cars to Japan.
Ross Perot
Human nature doesn’t change.
Ross Perot
That sucking sound you hear is the sound of US jobs going to Mexico.
Ross Perot
Build an environment where the first guy who sees the snake kills it.
Ross Perot
[On people being confused on how many billion dollars he was worth] One number is as good as another. When you get that high what difference does it make?
Ross Perot
I’ll support you, or I’ll tear your head off. I’m tired of excuses I want the jobs to stay here; I want the TV’s made here. No excuses. Let’s go back to basics.
Ross Perot
[On President Bush talking about government experience] I don’t have any experience in running up a $4 trillion debt.
Ross Perot
[On other GM board members] Pet rocks.
Ross Perot
In Pontiac [Michigan], GM executive parking garages are heated, while the poor guys who work in the plant freeze their tails off walking to work in the snow. It costs $140,000 a year to heat one parking garage. I’d shut that thing down. It has nothing to do with cars.
Ross Perot
We’ve had enough! Let’s do something!
Ross Perot
In many of our huge corporations we treat people like commodities. And people cannot be managed. Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.
Ross Perot
Debt is like a crazy aunt we keep down in the basement. All the neighbors know she’s there, but nobody wants to talk about her.
Ross Perot
What’s the most important thing you can tell me about leadership? I’d say, ‘Just treat people the way you’d want to be treated.’
Ross Perot
My grandmother was a little lady, about five feet tall, and one day she looked me squarely in the eye and said, “Son, if God ever intended you to smoke, he’d have put a chimney on your head, and I don’t see one.” That’s all it took, because I’ve never smoked a single cigarette in my life.
Ross Perot
I had an uncle who was killed in World War I, and his boys grew up without their dad. It helped me have a real understanding of the sacrifices that the soldiers and their families make for our freedom.
Ross Perot
I started the EDS Corporation with a thousand dollars, and we “boot-strapped” it from there.
Ross Perot
[On starting EDS] I took my idea to IBM to see if they would like to do it – they turned it down.
Ross Perot
[In the 1960’s] Most technology companies had very few leaders, mostly just a group of managers who wouldn’t know how to lead a group, even in silent prayer!
Ross Perot
I knew we had to have strong leaders and I was determined to have them.
Ross Perot
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