David Geffen

Is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton?

It isn’t about how tall you are or how good-looking you are or whether or not you can play football. It’s about whether you can create a relationship.

The opportunity for an entrepreneur to start a company from scratch today is abysmal.

[On his mother’s adversity] She had a very difficult beginning… All of my mothers family were killed… and she came to America at the time of the depression. It was not an easy life at all.

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

I think everybody thought I was crazy that I quit my job and started a management company in which I was managing one client – Laura Nyro.

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

Whenever I hear it can’t be done, I know I am close to success.

I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

I’ve always won, and I’m going to continue to win. And that’s the way it is.

Success isn’t about how much money you make. It’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.

To be successful you must accept all challenges that come your way. You can’t just accept the ones you like.

Success isn’t about how your life looks to others. It’s about how it feels to you. We realized that being successful isn’t about being impressive, it’s about being inspired. That’s what it means to be true to yourself.

Success tends to go not to the person who is error-free, because he also tends to be risk-averse. Rather it goes to the person who recognizes that life is pretty much a percentage business. It isn’t making mistakes that’s critical; it’s correcting them and getting on with the principal task.

I think I was born with the drive for success because I have a certain gene.

The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who do nothing and succeed.

You’ve achieved success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play.

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

Being stubborn is a big part of being a winner.

If I had to select one quality and one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick persistence I and determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, “Here comes number seventy one”.

To succeed, you need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.