J. Paul Getty

United States
15 Dec 1892 // 6 Jun 1976
Industrialist

Quotes

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Praise should always be given in public, criticism should always be given in private.

How to Be Rich (1965)
If businessmen always made the right decisions, business wouldn't be business.

How to Be Rich (1965)
I've always thought that I had a great gift for being a beachcomber... if I could find someone who could do the work better than I could I would hire that man and take it easy myself.

Quoted in Getty on Getty (1989)
I've always had a place for every dollar that came in. I've never seen the day where I could say that I felt rich. Generally you have to worry about paying the bills.

Interview, Evening Standard [London](1974)
The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.
The successful executive � the leader, the innovator � is the exceptional man.

How to Be Rich (1965)
I think a man is a business failure who lets his family life interfere with his business record... business is no place for him.

Quoted in Getty on Getty (1989)
Be an individualist � and an individual. You'll be amazed at how much faster you'll get ahead.

How to Be Rich (1965)
No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or 'get rich' in business by being a conformist.

International Herald Tribune (1961)
It's hard to make money in business; it's very difficult...and if your reward is relatively great, that's the way nature works. I don't see it's any more extraordinary for a man in business to accumulate a large fortune than a man in politics to attain high office.

Quoted in Getty on Getty (1989)
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays