American Quotes

A marriage contract to me is as binding as any in business, and I have always believed in sticking to an agreement.

Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience.

Nationalized industries are notorious for their inability to operate at a profit.

My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.

You cannot further the Brotherhood of Man by encouraging class hatred.

You cannot bring about prosperity without discouraging thrift.

I've never been one to bet on the weather.

Before marriage, many couples are very much like people rushing to catch an airplane; once aboard, they turn into passengers. They just sit there.

My love of fine art increased - the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see.

A hatred of failure has always been part of my nature.

The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor.

Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever captures it has it.

I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success.

Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed.

The man who comes up with a means for doing or producing almost anything better, faster or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips.

Without the element of uncertainty, the bringing off of even, the greatest business triumph would be dull, routine, and eminently unsatisfying.

The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.

Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.

To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business.

No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or 'get rich' in business by being a conformist.

If you can actually count your money, then you're not a rich man.

I buy when other people are selling.

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.

There are one hundred men seeking security to one able man who is willing to risk his fortune.

If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.

If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.

In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.

Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you're just sitting still?

Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.

When my opera Plump Jack was performed in 1989, my first piano teacher sent me something that I'd composed when I was four. I remember I played it, and it still sounded like me. I'm the same composer I was then.