David Geffen

The opportunity for an entrepreneur to start a company from scratch today is abysmal.

[On his mother] She certainly ran her own race… I thought my mother was nuts.

I’m not looking to be a personal manager.

[On being partners with Laura Nyro in Tuna Fish Music (Laura’s favorite food was Tuna Fish)] We became partners in this new publishing company.

We were all young and we were all inventing our careers. I was very close to Jackson, just as I’d been very close to Laura Nyro. With each person I had a unique relationship.

You can’t interview my brother!… We can call this thing off – right now!

There is a time and place for all things to be successful. There is fate and destiny and opportunity, and you need all three things in line at the same time.

My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There’s a lot of that in Silicon Valley.

If you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it.

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.

[On his first job in the mailroom of William Morris a casting agency] It was the first time in the my life that I thought ‘I can do that.’

The relationship between a manufacturer and his advertising agency is almost as intimate as the relationship between a patient and his doctor. Make sure that you can life happily with your prospective client before you accept his account.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your own family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by. If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out — either by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time. Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don’t think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.

There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don’t destroy them. They lay golden eggs.

The quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up.

Listen – it makes you sound smarter.

I think I’ve got the best staff in television.

Owning a great golf course gives you great power.

The consumer isn’t a moron. She is your wife.

When you are in real estate, you are going to make some mistakes.

I’m not looking to be a personal manager.