David Geffen

[In 1990 on the president of MCA calling and saying ‘We’re going to make you the biggest offer this company has ever made, and I’m going to send it to you by messenger right now.’] It’s 1990. Send me a fax.

I just needed a job. Before being hired as an usher at the CBS Theater, I didn’t even know there was a show business.

If you really believe it – go for it.

I’m not Sammy Glick. I’ve never killed anyone. I don’t have to. I’m too talented.

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

I’m not looking to be a personal manager.

A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

If you want more, you have to require more from yourself.

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.

Life did not stop, and one had to live.

He who is not busy being born is busy dying.

Every damn thing you do in this life, you have to pay for.

Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.

Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

If we were all just alike, one of us wouldn’t be necessary.

No American ought to be compelled to strike for his rights. He ought to receive them naturally, easily, as a matter of course.

I’m grateful for all the breaks and honors and opportunities I’ve had, but I always believe I won’t have it made until the humblest black kid in the most remote backwoods of America has it made.

People are used to being coddled.

What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.

We all wish to live. We all seek a world in which men are freed of the burdens of ignorance, poverty, hunger and disease. And we shall all be hard-pressed to escape the deadly rain of nuclear fall-out should catastrophe overtake us.

If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.