Chuck Feeney Quotes
118 Chuck Feeney Quotes
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When it came down to it, it’s always people.
Chuck Feeney
We gave $20,000 a month for thirty-six months to Sinn Fein – a total of $720,000, and there were dollops on top of that. It was the right thing to do. It proved you can bring people around to your thinking.
Chuck Feeney
[On pouring money in North Ireland to help underpin peace] It’s rare in life you get to write ‘finish’ to a major undertaking in such a satisfactory way. Today is that day.
Chuck Feeney
[On suitors wanting to buy the DFS business in the early 1990’s] We would get a letter every three months saying, ‘Gee, you people have a wonderful business, and we’d like to talk to you about buying it. They would say in a letter, ‘Let’s put something together.’ When you talked to them they would say, ‘Here’s how we will do it. We will give you 10 percent and pay the rest later. It doesn’t work that way, folks. So depending on the letterhead, we would get back and say, ‘Well, it is a good business and we’ve been operating it for a long time, and by the way it’s a cash transaction, and the cash involved would be $3 or $4 billion dollars.’ That chased away the walkers, talkers, and gawkers.
Chuck Feeney
[To Bernard Arnault of LVMH when discussing selling the business] We are not talking about trading paper, we are talking about cash, serious cash.
Chuck Feeney
[On being given an offer for his shares at a price $1 billion less than what he had been offered by LVMH and not responding to the low offer] I don’t respond to an offer like that.
Chuck Feeney
They’ve got my Irish up, I’m not going to give in.
Chuck Feeney
[On him selling his part of DFS to Bernard Arnault of LVMH] Everybody says it was pure genius on my part to have done this transaction at the price we did at the time we did. No genius! We would have done it sooner, and probably for less money.
Chuck Feeney
I simply decided I had enough money. It doesn’t drive my life. I’m a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy.
Chuck Feeney
Reconciliation and human rights were important areas that needed funding in Ireland and we wanted to see the potential of funding such organizations. In the press they say that half the people I fund in Northern Ireland are Republicans: the logic of that is that the other half must be loyalists.
Chuck Feeney
I feel very strongly about my roots…
Chuck Feeney
I think life is a learning process and you read books, you read stories, you empathise with people. I have always empathised with people who have it tough in life. The world is full of people who don’t get enough to eat.
Chuck Feeney
I think life is a learning process…
Chuck Feeney
[On helping the East Meets West Foundation] I just thought Vietnam got a bad deal, and I’d like to help out.
Chuck Feeney
[On supporting English training at Da Nang University in Vietnam feeling it was important to get on in the world] Not to be chauvinistic, but good English is very important.
Chuck Feeney
[On his first encounter with an Australian immigration official in the 1970s during a DFS business trip] I was asked if I had a police record. I said, ‘I didn’t know that was still a requirement! The guy went ballistic.
Chuck Feeney
The smarter you are, the smarter you get.
Chuck Feeney
[On naming rights for buildings] It doesn’t matter whose name is on a library as long as there is a library there for people.
Chuck Feeney
I think we have made 3,000 grants, so I suppose there is a scope for one of them to go sour.
Chuck Feeney
[On negative political and media comments] I’m a tough nut. I can put those things aside.
Chuck Feeney
If I have $10 in my pocket, and I do something with it today, it’s already producing ten dollars’ worth of good. The dollar you give today can be doing good tomorrow, giving 5 percent of it doesn’t do so much good.
Chuck Feeney
There is nothing wrong with a big bet, if a big bet is a good bet.
Chuck Feeney
I wouldn’t be comfortable in an 8,000-square-foot home. You couldn’t find anybody in it.
Chuck Feeney
[On walking instead of being driven around in a six-door Cadillac] You may live longer if you walk.
Chuck Feeney
I like the thrill of the chase.
Chuck Feeney
I set out to work hard, not to get rich.
Chuck Feeney
I try to live a normal life.
Chuck Feeney
I had one idea that never changed in my mind – that you should use your wealth to help people.
Chuck Feeney
Wealth brings responsibilities. People have to determine themselves whether they feel an obligation to use some of their wealth to improve life for their fellow human beings rather than create problems for future generations.
Chuck Feeney
It is their call what the rich do with their money. I would not want to impose my thoughts on any rich person…
Chuck Feeney
It’s a lot of work when you are over sixty-five to start a giving program. It doesn’t happen overnight. If you want to give it away, think about giving it away while you are alive because you’ll get a lot more satisfaction than if you wait until you’re dead. Besides, it’s a lot more fun.
Chuck Feeney
Spending is not a big problem, but spending it meaningfully is.
Chuck Feeney
There is an oriental proverb. Fortune doesn’t change a man, it only unmasks him. I guess under the mask is a kid from Elmore wearing a baseball cap.
Chuck Feeney
I have always empathised with people who have it tough in life.
Chuck Feeney
You should use your wealth to help people.
Chuck Feeney
The world is full of people who don’t get enough to eat.
Chuck Feeney
[On charity] We can help you, but you have to help someone else.
Chuck Feeney
Wealth brings responsibilities.
Chuck Feeney
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