David Geffen

Everybody was recording Laura Nyro’s songs and all of a sudden she was a very successful song-writer. And beginning to become hot. She had three songs in the top ten at one time…

We all acquire damage as infants and children and we work on removing those scars all of our lives. You won’t heal everything, but what’s important is the work.

[On Calvin Klein asking him ‘Why don’t you call it Geffen Records?’] People in the record business just don’t do that. They come up with names likes Asylum, Capricorn, or Island. [Calvin Klein said if you put your own name on the door ‘You’ll get laid more.’]

Starting a new studio was a thrilling challenge, but it was more stressful than fun. I never took a salary, a bonus or expenses. I learned never to do anything you’re not passionate about.

[On Joni Mitchell] If I didn’t talk to her for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t miss her for a minute.

In Los Angeles, they don’t want you to fail, they want you to die.

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.

Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.

The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.

People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.

I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean… and we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.

Can success change the human mechanism so completely between one dawn and another? Can it make one feel taller, more alive, handsomer, uncommonly gifted and indomitably secure with the certainty that this is the way life will always be? It can and it does!

You’ve achieved success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play.

Whenever I hear it can’t be done, I know I am close to success.

Success isn’t about how much money you make. It’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.

Whenever you see a successful person you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them.

Success covers a multitude of blunders.

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.