David Geffen

[On urging Nyro to tell Barbara Streisand that ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ had been personally written for her] It’s not a big lie.

I quickly figured out [that] the one ability I’d better have is to create relationships.

I came in early every day for six months till I intercepted the letter from UCLA saying they’d never heard of me. I replaced it with a letter that said I’d graduated.

My mother was an entrepreneur… She found being on relief humiliating. She built this business from scratch… In 1951 my mother opened this store…

The concept known as bal tashchit – ‘Do no destroy’ – has a special significance in Jewish tradition…We are constantly being warned in our faith that the capricious, thoughtless, wasteful destruction of the elements and creatures of the earth is wrong…We should remind ourselves daily of our responsibility to all aspects of creation.

[On learning negotiation skills from his mother] People would roll their eyes when my mother walked into the store. She was a nightmare in that regard.

The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

Losing is tough.

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.

One of the problems when you become successful is that jealousy and envy inevitably follow. There are people-I categorize them as life’s losers-who get their sense of accomplishment and achievement from trying to stop others. As far as I’m concerned, if they had any real ability they wouldn’t be fighting me, they’d be doing something constructive themselves.

If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians.

It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

One cannot expect to coast along and rise automatically to the top, no matter what friends you may have in the company. There may have been a time when, in large corporations, a person could rise simply because he had a stock interest or because he had friends in top management. That’s not true today. Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.

People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

Can success change the human mechanism so completely between one dawn and another? Can it make one feel taller, more alive, handsomer, uncommonly gifted and indomitably secure with the certainty that this is the way life will always be? It can and it does!

Keys to success: Research your ideas, plan for success, expect success, and just do it.

A lot of people don’t like to win. They actually don’t know how to win, and they don’t like to win because down deep inside they don’t want to win.