Larry Ellison Quotes

I spent most of my career operating businesses and fixing businesses, not staring at a Bloomberg screen.

Our managers need to have a strong integration of managerial skills and technical understanding. One cannot substitute for the other.

Technical people tend to be more 'techie,' and management people are more 'managerial.'

Once you establish what activities your company needs to do, the next question is, 'How do these activities get accomplished?' i.e. what resources do I need to make the activities happen?

Throughout my Enterprise career, I have been primarily operationally focused.

Everything has to be done for a reason, and everything has to be done to make sense in terms of running a proper business today, and it's not just about the food.

Two heads are definitely better than one and by sourcing ideas from each other, you have a better chance of coming up with a strategy that will allow your business to overcome a setback or challenge.

When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in my thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance.

We bring together the best ideas - turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.

Ideas are somewhat like babies - they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company executives do not say, "This is a damn-fool idea." Instead they ask, "What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?"

Where ideas are concerned, America can be counted on to do one of two things: Take a good idea and run it completely into the ground, or take a bad idea and run it completely into the ground.

The fact was I had the vision... I think everyone has... what we lack is the method.

Shareholder value theory - the destructive idea that companies should be run solely for the benefit of shareholders - has led to financialized businesses that do not invest in the areas that will lead to future growth or the invention of useful new products.

Building a business is not rocket science, it's about having a great idea and seeing it through with integrity.

My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's.

Management is a far more homely business than its would be scientists suggest, more closely allied to cookery than any other human activity. Like cooking, it rests on a degree of organisation and on adequate resources. But just as no two chefs run their kitchens the same way, so no two managements are the same.

When you have a time of crisis what happens depends on what ideas are floating around, and what ideas have been developed, and thought through, and are made effective.

Poor people will do almost anything to avoid problems. They see a challenge and they run...the secret to success, my friends, is not to try to avoid or get rid of or shrink from your problems; the secret is to grow yourself so that you are bigger than your problems.

Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once.

In the army, all combat officers are taught the "Estimate of the Situation": When you are faced with a problem - take that hill, or in business maybe grow your market share - the first thing you do is to make an analysis of your environment.

I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop, At the time that I am bored or understand - I use those words interchangeably - another appetite has formed.

Leadership is people taking the initiative, carrying things through, having ideas and the imagination to get something started, and exhibiting particular skills in different areas.

I can turn an idea into a business before you know it's going to be important. My first step will blow by you.

I had always been - everybody kind of likes comedy. I was very interested in comedy, beyond just liking it. I had friends that took apart radios; I wanted to take apart jokes.

A team of giants needs giant pitchers who throw good ideas but every pitcher needs an outstanding catcher. Without giant catchers, the ideas of the giant pitchers may eventually disappear.