Quotes from J. Paul Getty

My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.

Nostalgia often leads to idle speculation.

I'd rather have 1% of the effort of 100 men than 100% of my own effort.

A man can fail, but he isn't a failure until he blames someone else.

I would rather receive one percent of the income of 100 men, than 100% of the income of one man.

Without the element of uncertainty, the bringing off of even, the greatest business triumph would be dull, routine, and eminently unsatisfying.

I have absolutely no intention of marrying Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

There are at least 50 cities in the world that would have liked to obtain the Getty Collection.

The #1 guideline to success is you must be in business for yourself. When you work for someone else, you sell your time at wholesale to your employer, who then re-sells it at retail to the customer.

Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.

If you get up early, work late, and pay your taxes, you will get ahead -- if you strike oil.

The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavour. The beauty endures. A work of art lives...through the generations and centuries.

Control of a company does not carry with it the ability to control the price of its stock.

Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed.

I buy when other people are selling.

The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor.

My love of fine art increased - the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see.

You must take risks, both with your own money or with borrowed money. Risk taking is essential to business growth.

A marriage contract to me is as binding as any in business, and I have always believed in sticking to an agreement.

I have never been given to envy - save for the envy I feel toward those people who have the ability to make a marriage work and endure happily.

If you can actually count your money, then you're not a rich man.

The man who comes up with a means for doing or producing almost anything better, faster or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips.

I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success.

The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.