John Gotti

Always be nice to bankers. Always be nice to pension fund managers. Always be nice to the media. In that order.

I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That’s not me.

Don’t carry a gun. It’s nice to have them close by, but don’t carry them. You might get arrested.

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

I don’t know the rules of grammar. If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.

I’ve learned a tremendous amount from Oprah.

[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.

[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.’]

The real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.

Asking me to come work here is the dumbest idea you ever had. It has been a waste of a year.

[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.’

Employers only handle the money – it is the customer who pays the wages.

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

The best of merchandise will go back to the shelf unless handled by a conscientious, tactful salesman.

Our clients pay for value. London is the top city in the world, the best tax haven in the world for some and the top residential site in the city is One Hyde Park at the top end of Sloane Street.

If you can run one business well, you can run any business well.

For a long time now, I have believed that industry and agriculture are natural partners and that they should begin to recognize and practice their partnership. Each of them is suffering from ailments which the other can cure. Agriculture needs a wider andsteadier market; industrial workers need more steadier jobs. Can each be made to supply what the other needs? I think so. The link between is Chemistry. In the vicinity of Dearborn we are farming twenty thousand acres for everything from sunflowers to soy beans. We pass the crops through our laboratory to learn how they may be used in the manufacture of motor cars and, thus provide an industrial market for the farmers’ products.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.