David Geffen

I don’t think people get to be successful without ambition.

[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.’]

I used to be able to read memo’s upside down… It was like going to the college of the entertainment business.

It was just inconceivable to me I couldn’t win it all.

Happy is harder than money. Anyone who thinks money will make them happy, doesn’t have money.

My father died in 1960. He was an intellectual. . . . She made the money and he read a lot. He wasn’t successful or ambitious. He spoke lots of languages. There were times that kids said to me, ‘What does your father do?’ and I had to make something up because I actually didn’t know what he did.

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.

You may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in you.

To succeed, you need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.

If you want to double your success rate, you need to double your failure rate.

It was just inconceivable to me I couldn’t win it all.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

Success covers a multitude of blunders.

One cannot expect to coast along and rise automatically to the top, no matter what friends you may have in the company. There may have been a time when, in large corporations, a person could rise simply because he had a stock interest or because he had friends in top management. That’s not true today. Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.

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

The rich. You know why they’re so odd? Because they can afford to be.

There are only two rules for being successful. One, figure out exactly what you want to do, and two, do it.

Losing is tough.

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.

It’s a great thing when you can show that you’ve been successful and that you’ve made a lot of money and that you’ve employed a lot of people.

To succeed in life, you need to things: ignorance and confidence.