David Geffen

[In 1990 on the president of MCA calling and saying ‘We’re going to make you the biggest offer this company has ever made, and I’m going to send it to you by messenger right now.’] It’s 1990. Send me a fax.

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

[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.]

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.

We were all young and we were all inventing our careers. I was very close to Jackson, just as I’d been very close to Laura Nyro. With each person I had a unique relationship.

From the day I arrived, California seemed like an enchanted land.

Money often costs too much.

More and more these days I find myself pondering how to reconcile my net income with my gross habits.

Don’t matter how much money you got, there’s only two kinds of people: there’s saved people and there’s lost people.

The man who never has money enough to pay his debts has too much of something else.

I’m so poor I can’t even pay attention.

Philanthropic efforts are among the best rewards you can have for a life well lived.

Whoever thinks that money can’t buy happiness . . . just doesn’t know where to shop!

You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship. Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness.

finally know what distinguishes man from other beasts: financial worries.

What’s worth doing is worth doing for money.

Making money ain’t nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat and when you die you’re just as graveyard dead as he is.

His money is twice tainted: taint yours and taint mine.

Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.

I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

I don’t mind that I’m fat. You still get the same money.