Carl Icahn Quotes

If it were up to the executives, they probably wouldn't have directors at all.

In a network situation, a vice president, while he's shaving, can decide your history.

I don't get emails from my corporate overlords.

Politics exist in the boardroom, as well.

The problem with naming a No. 2 is you really want to throw all your weight behind the guy who is going to be the leader.

Depending on the level you're at in your company, the higher you go up in rank, usually the longer you can dance.

I understand that bureaucracy, hierarchy and managing politics is not easy.

On ships they call them barnacles; in business they attach themselves to desks and are called vice presidents.

If you make believe that ten guys in pin-striped suits are back in a kindergarten class playing with building blocks, you'll get a rough picture of what life in a corporation is like.

Its big men are mostly little men with fancy offices and a lot of money. A great many of them are stupid little men, with reach-me-down brains, small-town arrogance and a sort of animal knack of smelling out the taste of the stupidest part of the public. They have played in luck so long that they have come to mistake luck for enlightenment." - on Hollywood

All the great enterprises of the world are run by a few smart men: their aides and associates run down by rapid stages to the level of sheer morons. Everyone knows that this is true of government, but we often forget that it is equally true of private undertakings. In the average great bank, or railroad, or other corporation the burden of management lies upon a small group. The rest are ciphers.

Sometimes it seems like this is the choice - either kick ass or kiss ass.

The only thing on my mind is getting into that ring and destroying a boxing myth, someone who has reached a level of infamy through doing a number of stupid things.

This human struggle and scramble for office, for a way to live without work, will finally test the strength of our institutions.

To make an Army work you have to have every man in it fitted into a fear ladder... The Army functions best when you're frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates.

We have to be focused on not just who is in [Donald's Trump] favor and who is in his good graces and who looks right or what the palace intrigue is.

Strength and strength's will are the supreme ethic. All else are dreams from hospital beds, the sly, crawling goodness of sneaking souls.

Why did the generals who have been so ready to term me a complaisant and incompetent yes-man fail to secure my removal? Was that all that difficult? No, that wasn't it; the truth was that nobody would have been ready to replace me, because each one knew that he would end up just as much a wreck as I.

I issued a number of denials to people I thought needed to hear them

Okay. I wish for world peace,” Weetzie said. “I am sorry,” the genie said. “I cant grant that wish. Its out of my league.” “Then I wish for an infinite number of wishes!” Those people on fairy tales never thought of that. “People in fairy tales wish for that all the time,” the genie said. “They arent stupid. It just isnt in the records because I cant grant that type of wish.

He sees such a desperate rapaciousness prevail; such a disregard to equity, such contempt of order, such stupid blindness to future consequences, as must immediately have the most tragical conclusion, and most terminate in destruction to the greater number, and in a total dissolution of society to the rest.

They looked at me like I was some kind of threat. [Mick] Jagger really tried to put me down, but there was no way some crude, lippy guy was going to do a number on me. I was always able to squelch him. I found out that, if you stand up to Mick, he crumbles.

I learned early on that if you don't want your memos to get you in trouble someday, just don't write any.

Ideas really do matter. But in any organization a good idea will only go so far unless its proponents are willing to fight the political games to get the idea adopted.

We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth.