David Geffen

If you’re successful, people will talk about you. There’s nothing you can do about it. People make up stories.

Are you threatening me? If you so much as touch me I’ll have you arrested!

I just asked her to support me in this one thing. It’s not a big lie. She should have understood that I was just trying to sell the song to America’s premier songstress.

There are so few great talents, it’s always a discovery when you find the one.

[In 1969] I thought how awful, this poor girl is being managed by someone who had no respect for her at all… I’ve been her agent since then.

This is between us! You know this is the best thing for the company.

I’ve been making deals all my life.

My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There’s a lot of that in Silicon Valley.

It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.

No company can afford not to move forward. It may be at the top of the heap today but at the bottom of the heap tomorrow, if it doesn’t.

There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers.

Building a brand may be more important than building a business.

Machines were devised not to do a man out of a job, but to take the heavy labor from man’s back and place it on the broad back of the machine.

I have a great, great company. I employ thousands of people. And I’m very proud of the job I did.

We can serve our customers well only if our buying jobs are right. You cannot sell if you haven’t ordered wanted goods into your store.

I cannot remember a time when the Golden Rule was not my motto and precept, the torch that guided my footsteps.

In the long run people are going to buy the cheapest and the best article no matter where it is made.

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.

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.

[‘Why don’t you manage me’ – Laura Nyro] Eventually I thought do I really believe that she could be one of the biggest stars in the world? Should I give up my career at this point in my life, where I’m doing so well, and put all my marbles in Laura’s [Nyro] basket? And I woke up one morning and I thought if you really believe it – go for it.

To be most effective in sales today, it’s imperative to drop your ‘sales’ mentality and start working with your prospects as if they’ve already hired you.