David Geffen

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

If you really believe it – go for it.

That had her lip-syncing to a record… There was no protection for her as a person or as an artist…

[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 don’t think people get to be successful unless they have very strong egos.

[On Laura Nyro] Anything she wanted, I wanted to get for her.

There is no way you’re going to have an event like 9/11 and expect things to remain the same. They killed 3,000 people in New York on that day, and if they could have they would’ve killed 300,000.

In 1995, Russia virtually gave Chechnya de facto statehood and independence even though, de jure, it didn’t recognize Chechnya as an independent state. And I would like to emphasize strongly that Russia withdrew all of its troops, we moved the prosecutors, we moved all the police, dismantled all the courts, completely, 100 percent.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

I understand that it’s hard for everyone, but one cannot give in to emotions… we’ll have to draw lessons from the current crisis and now we’ll have to work on overcoming it.

The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.

Labour is the party of law and order in Britain today. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.

People apply for a job, are asked to work for three or four weeks on probation and are then told to go and are replaced by colleagues. There are shops even in the West End [of London] using large numbers of totally unpaid staff on a permanent basis.

A basic principle of modern state capitalism is that costs and risks are socialized to the extent possible, while profit is privatized.

The rascal multitude are the proper targets of the mass media and a public education system geared to obedience and training in needed skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on timely occasions.

One who views Latin America today [1981] might well assume that Hitler had won the war, though in fact it is American liberalism that a bears a major responsibility for the plague of terror and torture regimes that often mimic the Nazis.

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I’m beginning to believe it.

I don’t regret anything. I did everything absolutely correctly.

The only reason I don’t use the word class is that the terminology of political discourse is so debased it’s hard to find any words at all. That’s part of the point — to make it impossible to talk.

Leave the President’s family business to him. You will have plenty to do without trying to manage the First Family. They are likely to do fine without your help.

America must be the teacher of democracy, not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard.