Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed.
– J. Paul Getty
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?
– J. Paul Getty
I buy when other people are selling.
– J. Paul Getty
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.
– J. Paul Getty
If you can actually count your money, then you're not a rich man.
– J. Paul Getty
If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
– J. Paul Getty
If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.
– J. Paul Getty
In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.
– J. Paul Getty
Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.
– J. Paul Getty
My father said: You must never try to make all the money that's in a deal. Let the other fellow make some money too, because if you have a reputation for always making all the money, you won't have many deals.
– J. Paul Getty
No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or get rich in business by being a conformist.
– J. Paul Getty
Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever captures it has it.
– J. Paul Getty
The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.
– J. Paul Getty
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.
– J. Paul Getty
The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.
– J. Paul Getty
There are always opportunities through which businessmen can profit handsomely if they will only recognize and seize them.
– J. Paul Getty
There are one hundred men seeking security to one able man who is willing to risk his fortune.
– J. Paul Getty
To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business.
– J. Paul Getty
Without the element of uncertainty, the bringing off of even, the greatest business triumph would be dull, routine, and eminently unsatisfying.
– J. Paul Getty
My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.
– J. Paul Getty
The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor.
– J. Paul Getty
Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience.
– J. Paul Getty
My love of fine art increased - the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see.
– J. Paul Getty
I was 37 when my father died-and I no longer had any freedom of choice over what I would do with the rest of my life.
– J. Paul Getty
I have never been given to envy - save for the envy I feel toward those people who have the ability to make a marriage work and endure happily.
– J. Paul Getty
During the 1950s, Aristotle Onassis and I formed what grew to be a close friendship and association in several business ventures.
– J. Paul Getty
Before marriage, many couples are very much like people rushing to catch an airplane once aboard, they turn into passengers. They just sit there.
– J. Paul Getty
A marriage contract to me is as binding as any in business, and I have always believed in sticking to an agreement.
– J. Paul Getty
A hatred of failure has always been part of my nature.