Larry Ellison Quotes

The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.

Life’s a journey. It’s a journey about discovering limits.

I have had all the disadvantages required for success.

A corporation's primary goal is to make money.

Government's primary role is to take a big chunk of that money and give it to others.

When you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts.

When you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts.

Act confident, even when you're not.

When you're the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you're basically saying, "I'm right, and everyone else is wrong." That's a very unpleasant position to be in. It's at once exhilarating and at the same time an invitation to be attacked.

The most important aspect of my personality as far as determining my success goes; has been my questioning conventional wisdom, doubting experts and questioning authority. While that can be painful in your relationships with your parents and teachers, it's enormously useful in life.

I am also involved with all the acquisitions and overall strategy.

Now it's true, I don't run operations. But I've never really run operations. I've never had the endurance to run sales. The whole idea of selling to the customer just isn't my personality. I'm an engineer, tell me why something isn't working or is and I am curious.

I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.

Bill Gates wants people to think he's Edison, when he's really Rockefeller.

Referring to Gates as the smartest man in America isn't right... wealth isn't the same thing as intelligence.

I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it?

I'm right, and everyone else is wrong.

You have to act and act now.

If I were 21 years old, I would go into biotechnology or genetic engineering.

When I do something, it is all about self-discovery. I want to learn and discover my own limits.

Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. Sure, there’s the talent, but there also has to be the will. Give me human will and the intense desire to win and it will trump talent every day of the week.

All you can do is every day, try to solve a problem and make your company better. You can't worry about it, you can't panic when you look at the stock market's decline. You get frozen like a deer in the headlights. All you can do is all you can do.

In some ways, getting away from the headquarters and having a little time to reflect allows you to find errors in your strategy. You get to rethink things. Often, that helps me correct a mistake that I made or someone else is about to make.

To model yourself after Steve Jobs is like, 'I'd like to paint like Picasso, what should I do? Should I use more red?'

The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?

Once the business data have been centralized and integrated, the value of the database is greater than the sum of the preexisting parts.

I have hobbies. I do all sorts of ridiculous things.

I think about the business all the time.

Well I shouldn't say all the time. I don't think about it when I am wakeboarding. But even when I am on vacation, or on my boat; I am on email everyday. I am always prowling around the internet looking at what our competitors are doing.

The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion.

When you find errors in conventional wisdom-when everyone says A and A is not true-you gain competitive advantage. Only a few times do you have to find errors in conventional wisdom to make a living.

It's Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead.

We will still be enormously profitable and by far the most profitable enterprise software company.

Microsoft is already the most powerful company on earth but you ain't seen nothing yet.

Those that believe this is merely a downturn are mad.

Our industry is going to mature and as something matures, the rate of innovation does slow.

What can a sales person say to somebody to get them to buy a product that they already use every day if they don't like it? Nothing.

Oracle's got 100+ enterprise applications live in the #cloud;

today, SAP's got nothin' but SuccessFactors until 2020.

In order to grow at this pace, there will have to be a couple of acquisitions along the way. The tricky thing is to grow at this rate and maintain a 40 percent operating margin.

If your cash is about to run out, you have to cut your cash flow.

CEOs have to make those decisions and live with them however painful they may be. You have to act and act now; and act in the best interest of the company as a whole, even if it means that some people in the company who are your best friends have to work somewhere else.

It's my job for Oracle, the number two software company in the world;

to become the number one software company in the world. My job is to build better than the competition, sell those products in the marketplace and eventually supplant Microsoft and move from being number two to number one.

Our goal is very simply to become the desktop for e-businesses.

I think you might see us growing much deeper into banking.

You might see us acquiring companies in the banking area. You might see us acquiring companies in the retail area. I think you might see us acquiring companies in the telecommunications. I think you will see us getting stronger in business intelligence.

Both my mother and I were determined that we weren't going to stay on welfare.

We always worked toward doing better, toward having a better life. We never had any doubts that we would.

We have been doing things that are contrary;

the things that people tell us won't work from the beginning. In fact, the only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.

If the Internet turns out not to be the future of computing, we're toast.

But if it is, we're golden.

Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane.

When you live your life in different ways, it makes people around you become uncomfortable. So deal with it. They don't know what you are going to do.

Autonomy was shopped to us. We looked at the price and thought it was absurdly high.

Maui reminded me of San Diego: beautiful, but crowded.

I'm in two modes when I'm on Lanai: In engineering mode, I'm trying to find the right place for the reservoir and the desalination plant, and looking at designs for new hotel rooms. The rest of the time, I'm in decompression mode. I'm on Hulopoe Beach, going for a swim, or on my paddleboard surrounded by 100 spinner dolphins.

Lanai at one time grew 98% of the world's pineapples.

But the world's pineapples are now grown in two places, Costa Rica and Panama, because no one wants to spend $45 for a pineapple from the United States.

I have run engineering since day one at Oracle, and I still run engineering.

I hold meetings every week with the database team, the middle ware team, the applications team. I run engineering and I will do that until the board throws me out of there.

You have to take a broader view and realize this is an industry like any other - telecoms, Railroads; they went through consolidation. Why shouldn't the computer industry be any different? This shouldn't have been a surprise to anybody but it seemed to be, and a lot of people thought I was nuts when I said these things. And that's why they are alone as a consolidator.

I am so disturbed by kids who spend all day playing videogames.

I'm going to start these art museums that are basically converted homes, and I have one for modern art, and I have one for 19th century European art, and one for French impressionism. I've got Japanese.