Larry Ellison Quotes

Lawrence Joseph Ellison is an American businessman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who is co-founder, executive chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle Corporation. As of June 2018, he was listed by Forbes magazine as the fifth-wealthiest person in the United States and as the tenth-wealthiest in the world, with a fortune of $54.5 billion.Ellison was born in New York City and grew up in Chicago. He studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the University of Chicago without graduating before moving to California in 1966. While working at Ampex in the early 1970s, he became influenced by Edgar F. Codd's research on relational database design, which led in 1977 to the formation of what became Oracle. Oracle became a successful database vendor to mid- and low-range systems, competing with Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server, which led to Ellison being listed by Forbes as one of the richest men in the world.

Ellison has donated up to 1% of his wealth to charity and has signed The Giving Pledge. In addition to his work at Oracle, Ellison has had success in yachting, through Oracle Team USA. He is a licensed aircraft pilot who owns two military jets.

✵ 17. August 1944
Larry Ellison photo
Larry Ellison: 9   quotes 0   likes

Famous Larry Ellison Quotes

“When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working.”

Smithsonian Institution Oral and Visual Histories, Oral History Interview with Lawrence Ellison (24 October 1995) http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/le1.html.
Context: When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working. That was my primary goal. Sure, I wanted to make a living. I certainly never expected to become rich, certainly not this rich. I mean, rich does not even describe this. This is surreal.

“Twenty minutes compared to never, that's a lot. Our customer, the Central Intelligence Agency, would get very upset [if] somebody looks in their database.”

As quoted in "Ellison: Oracle remains unbreakable" CNN (21 January 2002) http://articles.cnn.com/2002-01-21/tech/oracle.unbreakable.idg_1_oracle-software-chairman-and-chief-software-microsoft-s-exchange?_s=PM:TECH.

“The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion.”

Referring to the term "cloud computing" in his Oracle OpenWorld 2008 speech, as quoted in "Oracle's Ellison nails cloud computing" at cnet (26 September 2008) http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-10052188-80.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5.
Context: The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?

“If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it.”

Financial Times interview (18 April 2006) http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto041820061306424713.
Context: If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is not disruptive at all – you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. … We don't have to fight open source, we have to exploit open source.

“Great achievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure.”

Evan Elite : Lesson #4: Break Through That Wall http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/649/Lesson-4-Break-Through-That-Wall.html.

“If the Internet turns out not to be the future of computing, we're toast. But if it is, we're golden.”

Statement in 1999, as quoted in "Oracle's Talking: Should You Be Listening?" by Jeff Sweat in Information Week (7 February 2000) http://www.informationweek.com/772/oracle.html.

“Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.”

On the previous managers of Sun after Oracles take-over, in "Special Report: Can that guy in Ironman 2 whip IBM in real life?" Reuters (12 May 2010) http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64B5YX20100512.

“I hate the PC, with a passion.”

Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996), 47"00.

“It's Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead”

article http://www.thetherapist.com/cgi-bin/BBS2/index.cgi?read=259 in The Wall Street Journal (5 March 1998).

Similar authors

Richard Branson photo
Richard Branson 25
English business magnate, investor and philanthropist
Bill Gates photo
Bill Gates 92
American business magnate and philanthropist
Tomáš Baťa photo
Tomáš Baťa 7
Czech businessman
Warren Buffett photo
Warren Buffett 146
American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist
Stephen R. Covey photo
Stephen R. Covey 125
American educator, author, businessman and motivational spe…
Jim Rohn photo
Jim Rohn 13
American motivational speaker
Guglielmo Marconi photo
Guglielmo Marconi 3
Italian inventor and radio pioneer
Walt Disney photo
Walt Disney 102
American film producer and businessman
Arnold Schwarzenegger photo
Arnold Schwarzenegger 52
actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heri…
Lee Iacocca photo
Lee Iacocca 10
American businessman