J. Paul Getty Quotes

Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.

- J. Paul Getty

In Japan, I was immensely impressed by the politeness, industrious nature and conscientiousness of the Japanese people.

- J. Paul Getty

Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever captures it has it.

- 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

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

The rich are not born sceptical or cynical. They are made that way by events, circumstances.

- J. Paul Getty

The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.

- J. Paul Getty

There are heads of royal families who control hereditary fortunes that defy comprehension.

- J. Paul Getty

If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.

- J. Paul Getty

Nationalized industries are notorious for their inability to operate at a profit.

- 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 am neither a homosexual nor a eunuch, nor have I ever taken any vows of chastity.

- J. Paul Getty

The overwhelming majority of my rated wealth consists of investments in companies that produce goods and services.

- J. Paul Getty

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.

- J. Paul Getty

You cannot bring about prosperity without discouraging thrift.

- J. Paul Getty

I have absolutely no intention of marrying Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

- 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

I vehemently deny that I was born a cynic and a pessimist.

- 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

My wealth is not a subject I relish discussing.

- 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

I have always enjoyed the company of women and have formed deep and long-lasting friendships with many of them.

- J. Paul Getty

Jack Dempsey and I became friends in the very early 1920s.

- J. Paul Getty

Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience.

- 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

Whether we like it or not, men and women are not the same in nature, temperament, emotions and emotional responses.

- 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

Control of a company does not carry with it the ability to control the price of its stock.

- J. Paul Getty

My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.

- J. Paul Getty

I am - and have always been - a Methodist.

- J. Paul Getty

My yachts were, I suppose, outstanding status symbols.

- J. Paul Getty

I take pride in the creation of my wealth, in its existence and in the uses to which it has been and is being put.

- J. Paul Getty

You cannot further the Brotherhood of Man by encouraging class hatred.

- J. Paul Getty

Five wives can't all be wrong.

- 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

Governments, of course, can - and do - soak the rich.

- J. Paul Getty

How does one measure the success of a museum?

- J. Paul Getty

What I learned at Oxford has been used to great advantage throughout my business career.

- J. Paul Getty

There are one hundred men seeking security to one able man who is willing to risk his fortune.

- J. Paul Getty

I was brought up in an era when thrift was still considered a virtue.

- 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

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

Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed.

- J. Paul Getty

I've never been one to bet on the weather.

- J. Paul Getty

Nostalgia often leads to idle speculation.

- 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

The Roaring Twenties were the period of that Great American Prosperity which was built on shaky foundations.

- 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

Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.

- J. Paul Getty

If you can actually count your money, then you're not a rich man.

- J. Paul Getty

There are at least 50 cities in the world that would have liked to obtain the Getty Collection.

- J. Paul Getty

In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.

- 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

A hatred of failure has always been part of my nature.

- J. Paul Getty

I buy when other people are selling.

- J. Paul Getty

I can afford to say what I wish.

- J. Paul Getty