Carl Icahn Quotes

What we call a financial crisis is really at its core a crisis of management, and not just a crisis of management, but a crisis of management culture. ...In other words, what you had is a detachment of people who know the business from people who are running the business.

If Bill Gates left Microsoft we wouldn't allow Donald Trump to run it.

People who have never run even a modest little business assert with great certainty and indignation that heads of multinational corporations are paid much more than they are worth. People who know nothing about medicine and nothing about economics unhesi.

In business, there's a constant focus on developing strategies, reviewing executive performance against those strategies each year, engaging with opposing or different points of view, and having intellectual dialogue.

Don't blame the marketing department. The buck stops with the chief executive.

A lot of what I do is running businesses rather than buying stocks. My worst decision is probably when I know I have the wrong chief executive running the business, and I keep on waiting to make the difficult decision of replacing him.

I don't understand why people whose entire lives or their corporate success depends on communication, and yet they are led on occasion by CEOs who cannot talk their way out of a paper bag and don't care to.

Women will take over the Ford Motor Company someday—and wreck it. That’s what happened at Gulf Oil

I'm the non-executive chairman of nine or so major companies, and on the nine companies, it's a little trying because you jump from one industry to another, as the case might be. But one had the reasonable knowledge of those nine activities, and it's been an exciting job.

America is the largest corporation on the planet. You wouldn't hire a novice to run a similarly sized company in the private markets. My father has created more jobs through his private businesses than certainly any of the candidates. Mitt Romney has executive experience, but it's a different type. He didn't run entrepreneurial businesses.

If you can run one company, you can run another. Running companies are about inspiring and driving the best out of people.

The Obama administration asked General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner to step down, and he agreed. This is good news for Obama; the last time he tried to get someone to quit, it took months -- and even then, he had to promise her a job as secretary of state. ... According to the government, Rick Wagoner was forced to resign because of poor performance. That's embarrassing -- run an organization that loses billions of dollars and then get fired by a guy who heads up an organization that loses trillions of dollars.

I certainly have no desire to sell a good controlled business run by people I like and admire, merely to obtain a fancy price. However, specific conditions may cause the sale of one operating unit at some point.

I would love to see Mr. (Henry) Ford in there, really. I don't know who started the idea that a President must be a Politician instead of a Business man. A Politician can't run any other kind of business. So there is no reason why he can run the U.S. That's the biggest single business in the World.

Donald Trump says he wants to run America like he's running his business? God help us.

You could transfer Congress over to run Standard Oil or General Motors, and they would have both things bankrupt in two years.

You don't characterize CEOs as dealmakers or in any one particular area. An important characteristic of a CEO is leader. That's probably the most important characteristic.

A great company in the media business needs visionary leaders, not a conglomerate structure headquartered in Columbus Circle that second guesses.

If I'm setting up a new business I'll spend three or four months learning everything there is about that business, everything there is about that subject and then I will find good people to run it on a day-to-day basis, but whilst they're running it at least I know what they're talking about when they come back to me.

I've made money over the years by buying into good companies, run by good people, at attractive prices. And I don't try and make it out of buying into the market at one point and selling at another point.

I think the foundation at Berkshire [Buffett's stake in Berkshirewill pass to the Buffett Foundation upon his death] will be a plus because there will be a continuation of the culture. We'd still take in fine businesses run by people who love them.

Over the last 40 years, I have built MW into a multi-billion dollar company with amazing employees and loyal customers who value the products and service they receive at MW. Over the past several months I have expressed my concerns to the Board about the direction the company is currently heading.Instead of fostering the kind of dialogue in the Boardroom that has in part contributed to our success, the Board has inappropriately chosen to silence my concerns through termination as an executive officer.

The banks don't have anything - no rights whatsoever. The banks are shareholders of SLEC, and SLEC has no rights. I am the CEO of Formula One Management and Formula One Administration, which runs the business in F1. From this point of view, I own F1.

We're in a world that is run by accountants and I think that it's sad in many ways.

People ought to invest in us because they like our company and the way they run it. We still do quarterly earnings guidance, but we tell people openly that they ought to look at the company for the long term and that's how they ought to invest.