Roman Abramovich

I myself never make any notes. Usually, if I write something down, I can’t read it afterwards.

I never insisted that I was a good student.

It’s a new endeavour for me. I’ve never run a territory. I’ve never talked publicly to people. I’ve got to try it just to see whether I like it.

But charity is a very complicated thing. It’s important to find an area where you can really help and you can feel the results. Charity is not like feeding pigeons in the square. It is a process that requires professional management.

It was impossible to operate in the aluminium business without krysha – very real physical protection.

Money plays an important role in football but it is not the dominating factor. When Chelsea play a Carling Cup game in a small city and it could result in a draw – the excitement, the spirit, the atmosphere – that’s the real beauty of football in England.

A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.

The Golden Rule finds no limit of application in business.

I was never involved in arms trading. In the Russian Federation, arms trading is the prerogative of the state.

I started the site when I was 19. I didn’t know much about business back then.

Many manufacturers secretly question whether advertising really sells their product, but are vaguely afraid that their competitors might steal a march on them if they stopped.

There is a time and place for all things to be successful. There is fate and destiny and opportunity, and you need all three things in line at the same time.

You have an idea of the way you think it is, and it’s not that way at all, it’s something else.

In New York and Los Angeles, you can throw your car keys to the valet and he parks it. Same in Hong Kong and Singapore, the service is off the scale. In London it’s sub-standard to abysmal.

London has got better as it’s become more international – you only have to look at the quality of the restaurants to see how improved it’s become.

I’ve learned a tremendous amount from Oprah.

I decided to sit quietly and do business and don’t stick your neck out and tell everybody everything belongs to me. That would only cause problems for myself. Therefore I never told these stories or declared all these things to anyone.

Your business, and your brand must first let people know what you care about and that you care about them.

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.

[To his ex-entertainment lawyer Eric Eisner who resigned from the presidency of The David Geffen Company in 1991 just as a deal was about to be made with some Japanese] Keep your stock. [Eric sold it.]

I own buildings. I’m a builder; I know how to build. Nobody can build like I can build. Nobody. And the builders in New York will tell you that. I build the best product. And my name helps a lot.

Getting permanent value out of a job means purpose and fitting means to ends.