David Geffen

I don’t care what their [Guns N’ Roses] record is. If you need a blood donor and the only person who can give you a transfusion is Hitler, you take the blood.

[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 buy my clothes at J.Crew online. I’m a very casual guy.

I intend to be me. Whatever that is.

[On his early day in the music business] I stepped on a lot of toes… at that time.

[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.’

If you ever get started on the right path to change, there is one important precondition you have to meet. You must rid yourself of that gnawing and overpowering sense of urgency and panic that always seems to appear on the scene.

Change can come in either of two important ways: Start behaving positively or stop behaving negatively.

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.

As parents we’re not nearly as computer literate as our children are.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will.

Indulgence doesn’t prepare, indulgence can cripple a child because the world won’t indulge her.

Life, as I see it, is not a location, but a journey. Life flows.

The number one need in all people is the need for acceptance, the need to experience a sense of belonging to something and someone. The need for acceptance is more powerful in your family than anywhere else…. If that need is not met by your family, trust me, your kids will go elsewhere to seek it in order to find approval and acceptance.

You are so much more than what people have done to you, and to let that define you, would be a tragedy.

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

Thought is the original source of all wealth, all success, all material gain, all great discoveries and inventions, and all achievement.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.

To err is human, to forgive divine.