Larry Ellison Quotes

I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don't know what I'll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around ... anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset. ~ Larry Ellison

I'm going to start these art museums that are basically converted homes, and I have one for modern art, and I have one for 19th century European art, and one for French impressionism. I've got Japanese. ~ Larry Ellison

If your cash is about to run out, you have to cut your cash flow. CEOs have to make those decisions and live with them however painful they may be. You have to act and act now; and act in the best interest of the company as a whole, even if it means that some people in the company who are your best friends have to work somewhere else. ~ Larry Ellison

We have an ideal location for a couple of organic wineries on the island. But the reintroduction of commercial agriculture to Lanai is 100% dependent upon increasing the available water on the island. So we're going to use solar energy to convert seawater to fresh water. ~ Larry Ellison

We've announced an Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance, a bunch of low-cost commodity servers running Linux, integrated in our case, with InfiniBand - connected with InfiniBand vs. the traditional Ethernet. ~ Larry Ellison

Our goal is very simply to become the desktop for e-businesses. ~ Larry Ellison

But in reality, with Mr. Ellison there is an essence of probity about him; unlike Dorian Grey, him and his hidden portrait are both wonderful. When he speaks there is a certain intonation he gets that reveals so much about him, that you can't help but to feel rapt, and so few get to hear his unspoken thought because they are fixated on the bling and the big show. ~ Avra Amar Filion

I wish HP nothing but the best. I think HP is an icon. Those of us who had their careers in the Valley think of Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett as role models. We would love to be half as good as they were. ~ Larry Ellison

All you can do is every day, try to solve a problem and make your company better. You can't worry about it, you can't panic when you look at the stock market's decline. You get frozen like a deer in the headlights. All you can do is all you can do. ~ Larry Ellison

Because software is all about scale. The larger you are, the more profitable you are. If we sell twice as much as software, it doesn't cost us twice as much to build that software. So the more customers you have, the more scale you have. The larger you are, the more profitable you are. ~ Larry Ellison

In order to grow at this pace, there will have to be a couple of acquisitions along the way. The tricky thing is to grow at this rate and maintain a 40 percent operating margin. ~ Larry Ellison

When I do something, it is all about self-discovery. I want to learn and discover my own limits. ~ Larry Ellison

When you find errors in conventional wisdom-when everyone says A and A is not true-you gain competitive advantage. Only a few times do you have to find errors in conventional wisdom to make a living. ~ Larry Ellison

It's Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead. ~ Larry Ellison

One of the great things about Lanai is that the weather is always fabulous. Always 82 degrees and sunny. The problem is that, like California now, Lanai needs more water. ~ Larry Ellison

I love sailing. I like it more when I am winning. ~ Larry Ellison

I greatly admire GE, their utterly ruthlessly focused management, to get the cost out and get this integration done.' Okay, we may make a few mistakes along the way but we are not going to waste any time.' They make decisions; they are incredibly disciplined and focused. ~ Larry Ellison

If I see Danny Hillis quoted as an expert on MPP one more time, I'm going to puke. ~ Larry Ellison

Do I have a problem with Larry Ellison buying Sun? No, that's part of the capitalist system. As soon as we go public we're for sale, that's part of the deal. And do I have a problem with him exercising his intellectual property rights? No, I don't have a problem with that. Would it be how we necessarily ran and operated? Obviously not. ~ Scott McNealy

It's my job for Oracle, the number two software company in the world; to become the number one software company in the world. My job is to build better than the competition, sell those products in the marketplace and eventually supplant Microsoft and move from being number two to number one. ~ Larry Ellison

I'm in two modes when I'm on Lanai: In engineering mode, I'm trying to find the right place for the reservoir and the desalination plant, and looking at designs for new hotel rooms. The rest of the time, I'm in decompression mode. I'm on Hulopoe Beach, going for a swim, or on my paddleboard surrounded by 100 spinner dolphins. ~ Larry Ellison

Winning is not enough. All others must lose. ~ Larry Ellison

Think of it as you want it, not as it is! ~ Larry Ellison

Game-playing is more fun when it's virtual because you're more successful ... in reality, only one person gets to be LeBron. ~ Larry Ellison

Five years from now, I don't know how I'll think. ~ Larry Ellison

Right now, 70 percent of the people don't have computers. And where they're needed most, people don't have them. We think this will enable anyone to own a computer. We're aiming at everybody who uses a computer as an information access device. The original idea was to build one cheaply enough to put one on every desk. ~ Larry Ellison

My favorite museums are things like the Frick Museum in New York and the Huntington Hartford in Pasadena where it's someone's home that you walk through. ~ Larry Ellison

Oracle's got 100+ enterprise applications live in the #cloud; today, SAP's got nothin' but SuccessFactors until 2020. ~ Larry Ellison

Once the business data have been centralized and integrated, the value of the database is greater than the sum of the preexisting parts. ~ Larry Ellison

Maui reminded me of San Diego: beautiful, but crowded. ~ Larry Ellison

If an innovative piece of software comes along, Microsoft copies it and makes it part of Windows. This is not innovation; this is the end of innovation. ~ Larry Ellison

To model yourself after Steve Jobs is like, 'I'd like to paint like Picasso, what should I do? Should I use more red?' ~ Larry Ellison

I started NetSuite. NetSuite was my idea. I called up Evan Goldberg and said, 'We're going to do ERP on the Internet, software-as-a-service.' Six months later Marc Benioff, finding out what NetSuite was doing, and kind of copied it. ~ Larry Ellison

Both my mother and I were determined that we weren't going to stay on welfare. We always worked toward doing better, toward having a better life. We never had any doubts that we would. ~ Larry Ellison

If you do everything that everyone else does in business, you're going to lose. The only way to really be ahead, is to 'be different'. ~ Larry Ellison

A corporation's primary goal is to make money. Government's primary role is to take a big chunk of that money and give it to others. ~ Larry Ellison

You have to act and act now. ~ Larry Ellison

I saw that we needed to grow but our top line wasn't growing, so we had to find other ways to grow the business. We had to reshape our business and acquire share in a non conventional way. But most tech leaders don't come out of a business background. They really have a parochial point of view. All they know are the go-go years of Silicon Valley. That's the environment in which they were raised. ~ Larry Ellison

You have to take a broader view and realize this is an industry like any other - telecoms, Railroads; they went through consolidation. Why shouldn't the computer industry be any different? This shouldn't have been a surprise to anybody but it seemed to be, and a lot of people thought I was nuts when I said these things. And that's why they are alone as a consolidator. ~ Larry Ellison

It's fascinating as we continue to innovate and lead the way in both the application space and the database space. In the very beginning, people said you couldn't make relational databases fast enough to be commercially viable. I thought we could, and we were the first to do it. But we took tremendous abuse until IBM said, "Oh yeah, this stuff is good." ~ Larry Ellison

You realize that life is short and fragile; and when you are facing walls of water, you understand your own mortality can change and how quickly things could change. ~ Larry Ellison

We think a modern cloud lets you decide when you want to upgrade. We don't decide for you. ~ Larry Ellison

Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. ~ Larry Ellison

Being first is more important to me [than earning money]. I have so much money. Whatever money is, it's just a method of keeping score now. I mean, I certainly don't need more money. ~ Larry Ellison

We have most of the software industry running Autonomy. ~ Larry Ellison

Don't mistake any of this for altruism ... Fear and greed just doesn't work. If you want to be successful, quality and service just works better. ~ Larry Ellison

So, what you can do in Microsoft Word is what Bill Gates has decided. What you can do in Oracle Database is what Larry Ellison and his crew have decided. ~ Ted Nelson

Microsoft is already the most powerful company on earth but you ain't seen nothing yet. ~ Larry Ellison

Everyone thought the acquisition strategy was extremely risky because no one had ever done it successfully. In other words, it was innovative. ~ Larry Ellison

I own a home in Kyoto, Japan actually on the temple on grounds in Nanzenji that is going to become a Japanese art museum. ~ Larry Ellison

The things that caused problems for me in school are the same things that help me succeed in the world. ~ Larry Ellison

I hate the PC, with a passion. ~ Larry Ellison

It's like a bunch of hookers advertising their cellulite/ stretch- mark infested bodies to the highest bidder, and then claiming they deserve respect. Crawling on their hands and knees, pupils dilated on the high of greed, licking their lips almost tasting their next job of self- whoredom, and nothing is more tempting than the idea of Mr. Ellison. He could pay for tricks perform by the Pope, chandler-swinging strip-tease nuns.. No one has ever said "NO" to the idea of money and therefore no one has ever said "No" to Mr. Ellison and actually meant it... and then you have to wonder why he has no respect for people? ~ Avra Amar Filion

If the Internet turns out not to be the future of computing, we're toast. But if it is, we're golden. ~ Larry Ellison

Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales. ~ Larry Ellison

I think after a certain amount, I'm going to give almost everything I have to charity. What else can you do with it? You can't spend it, even if you try. I've been trying. ~ Larry Ellison

All you can do is all you can do. ~ Larry Ellison

In some ways, getting away from the headquarters and having a little time to reflect allows you to find errors in your strategy. You get to rethink things. Often, that helps me correct a mistake that I made or someone else is about to make. ~ Larry Ellison

So if people want to make a monster out of him, if they want to write books that make him into a cold-hearted man, without a conscience and then write ill about him because he has made a few mistake in life like any normal person would. That has become rough around the edges because so many people have taken advantage of his kindness and child- like naivety to continue to believe in the better of others, while they do nothing but tear him down to pieces to suit their purpose. ~ Avra Amar Filion

The most important aspect of my personality as far as determining my success goes; has been my questioning conventional wisdom, doubting experts and questioning authority. While that can be painful in your relationships with your parents and teachers, it's enormously useful in life. ~ Larry Ellison

Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. ~ Larry Ellison

Be careful about virtual relationships with artificially intelligent pieces of software. ~ Larry Ellison

I'd prefer people read about Churchill and how he wasn't overwhelmed by Nazi Germany. Amazing; that the morale of a country rested on one person's shoulders. Extraordinary people carried that country through its darkest hours; truly inspirational. I suppose that's my theme. Whether it's a biography or a movie; whether it's fictional or true, I'm inspired by people doing great things. ~ Larry Ellison

Keeping at heart that quote, I can say with all surety that everything everyone paints Mr. Ellison out to be, everything they describe they see when they look at him is purely a reflection of their own sickness and degeneracy. Everything they accuse him of and say is wrong; they would do in a heartbeat, and are doing, but just not in such magnitude. The rich and the poor both sin, the poor man just hates that the rich man can afford better quality... in most cases. ~ Avra Amar Filion

That spring Larry Ellison saw Amelio at a party and introduced him to the technology journalist Gina Smith, who asked how Apple was doing. "You know, Gina, Apple is like a ship," Amelio answered. "That ship is loaded with treasure, but there's a hole in the ship. And my job is to get everyone to row in the same direction." Smith looked perplexed and asked, "Yeah, but what about the hole?" From then on, Ellison and Jobs joked about the parable of the ship. "When Larry relayed this story to me, we were in this sushi place, and I literally fell off my chair laughing," Jobs recalled. "He was just such a buffoon, and he took himself so seriously. He insisted that everyone call him Dr. Amelio. That's always a warning sign. ~ Walter Isaacson

When I was a kid a long time ago, when the sun rose, I was outside on my bike. If my parents were lucky - poor parents! - I would be home before it got dark. ~ Larry Ellison

I know some people are offended by the fact that I'm spending a lot of money trying to win the America's Cup. I could have given all that money to charity. ~ Larry Ellison

Oracle's latest database, version 12c, was specifically designed for the cloud. Oracle 12c makes all your Oracle applications multitenant applications without you having to make any changes whatsoever to your applications. ~ Larry Ellison

Act confident, even when you're not. ~ Larry Ellison

You have to believe in what you do in order to get what you want. ~ Larry Ellison

I think about the business all the time. Well I shouldn't say all the time. I don't think about it when I am wakeboarding. But even when I am on vacation, or on my boat; I am on email everyday. I am always prowling around the internet looking at what our competitors are doing. ~ Larry Ellison

Internet services at Apple, Jobs's wingman in dealing with content companies. ANDREA "ANDY" CUNNINGHAM. Publicist at Regis McKenna's firm who handled Apple in the early Macintosh years. MICHAEL EISNER. Hard-driving Disney CEO who made the Pixar deal, then clashed with Jobs. LARRY ELLISON. CEO of Oracle and personal friend of Jobs. ~ Walter Isaacson

I have hobbies. I do all sorts of ridiculous things, ~ Larry Ellison

What is Oracle? A bunch of people. And all of our products were just ideas in the heads of those people - ideas that people typed into a computer, tested, and that turned out to be the best idea for a database or for a programming language. ~ Larry Ellison

What can a sales person say to somebody to get them to buy a product that they already use every day if they don't like it? Nothing. ~ Larry Ellison

I have had all of the disadvantages required for success. ~ Larry Ellison

There's a wonderful saying that's dead wrong. 'Why did you climb the mountain?' 'I climbed the mountain because it was there.' That's utter nonsense ... You climbed the mountain because you were there, and you were curious if you could do it. You wondered what it would be like. ~ Larry Ellison

You cannot innovate by copying. ~ Larry Ellison

We think we're going to be especially strong in platform where we have our two platform brands: our database brand is the Oracle Database 12c, and our programming language brand is this thing called Java. ~ Larry Ellison

Those that believe this is merely a downturn are mad. Our industry is going to mature and as something matures, the rate of innovation does slow. ~ Larry Ellison

Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. Sure, there's the talent, but there also has to be the will. Give me human will and the intense desire to win and it will trump talent every day of the week. ~ Larry Ellison

When you're the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you're basically saying, "I'm right, and everyone else is wrong." That's a very unpleasant position to be in. It's at once exhilarating and at the same time an invitation to be attacked. ~ Larry Ellison

Highly successful leaders ignore conventional wisdom and take chances. Their stories inevitably include a defining moment or key decision when they
took a significant risk and thereby experienced a breakthrough. ~ Larry Osborne

The Christian always has reason to celebrate. When we fail, celebrate His grace. When we are blessed, celebrate His mercy. When others reject us, celebrate His love. ~ Larry Crabb

Murder! Sex! Violence! Hardships! Mayhem! Struggle! Love! Camaraderie!...what's not to like? ~ Larry Landgraf

Orders were often given by those who lacked imagination. ~ Larry Correia

Some time ago, I told Larry King that I planned to live to be 102. I still do. ~ Maureen O'Hara

I did everything when I started. In Miami I did news, I did weather, I did sports, I did disk-jockeying. And I did a sports talk show every week - every Saturday night. ~ Larry King

The most important fact is that gays have been here since day one. To say otherwise is a gross denial and stupidity. We played an enormous part in the history of America. ~ Larry Kramer

The big tragedy in baseball is that the amateur spirit has gone out of it to a large extent. ~ Larry MacPhail

I was performing from the age of three. ~ Jennifer Ellison

All boys are pathetic. ~ Larry Doyle

I'm Larry Sanders. I'm a person. I'm a father. I'm an artist. I'm a writer. I'm a painter. I'm a musician. And sometimes I play basketball. ~ Larry Sanders

Meet Crazy Eddie ~ Larry Niven

I have a simple algorithm, which is, wherever you see paid researchers instead of grad students, that's not where you want to be doing research. ~ Larry Page

I don't mind about the dead ones. They're dead. The worst of it is, they cling to the living and won't let go. ~ Larry Kramer

She had a beautiful face, a beautiful body, but also a distance in her such as he had never met a woman. ~ Larry McMurtry

The British press ... [claimed that Tony] Blair was simply Bush's poodle - a favorite phrase, bewilderingly popular, although it made no sense - and that he was ignoring the will of the British people. Considering the hacks had spent Blair's first six years in office condemning him for relying on focus groups and opinion polls for his policies - in other words, paying attention to nothing but the will of the people, or at least their whims - that seemed a little rich to me, but as I said, logical consistency has never figured highly in the British media's scale of values. ~ Larry King

Behind the sullen girl sat Denis Cooverman, sweating: along the cap of his mortarboard, trickling behind his ears and rippling down his forehead; around his nostrils and in that groove below his nose (which Denis would be quick to identify as the philtrum ... ); from his palms, behind his knees, inside his elbows, between his toes and from many locations not typically associated with perpiratory activity; squirting out his nipples, spewing from his navel, coursing between his buttocks and forming a tiny lake that gently lapped at his genitals; from under his arms, naturally, in two varietals
hot and sticky,a nd cold and terrified. ~ Larry Doyle

When you constantly hear people talking about going the distance, going the distance, you can't help but wonder about it. I learned a lesson: next time I will fight my fight without that doubt. ~ Larry Holmes