Dick Smith Quotes

120 Dick Smith Quotes

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If I can start Dick Smith Electronics and Australian Geographic, employ lots of people and make lots of dollars, it’s obviously got to be very simple. I just use commonsense!
Dick Smith

[On Woolworths querying about not having received a budget and asking what he thought they would do in the future after they had bought into Dick Smith Electronics] Somewhere between making a fortune and going broke!
Dick Smith

Fifty years from now people should be able to read an AG [Australian Geographic] article with the assurance that the facts in it were correct.
Dick Smith

[On saying that the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) should stop publishing its annual list of those fined for evading taxes and replacing it with a list of people who paid the most tax] Because there would be great rivalry to be on it.
Dick Smith

If people find me conning the Customs Department, they are obviously going to con me.
Dick Smith

[On cigarette companies they should say] Yes, we are exploiting kids – that’s our market. It’s a legal product and we need to recruit more people to buy it.
Dick Smith

[On Nostradamus] How can anyone believe such absolute rubbish!
Dick Smith

I will give $100,000 to anyone who can show me that they can water-divine or that they have paranormal power. … to save time, I ask that anyone who wishes to take up the challenge writes to me first so that a preliminary test can be done.
Dick Smith

[On asking a local service station to fill up his petrol powered pogo stick at a cost of 2 cents] Fill her up!
Dick Smith

Imagine one Monday morning when you get to the office and your friends ask you what you did on the weekend, and you say you flew to the South Pole!
Dick Smith



[On being asked what he was doing in August 1980] Well, tomorrow I’m jumping over seventeen motorbikes in a double-decker bus.
Dick Smith

[On being setup for his 100th video show with someone sending a girl from Boobs and Bubbly] We’re fully abreast of the times!
Dick Smith

Do it in parallel!
Dick Smith

My returns from commercial property investment this years are rotten. From now on, only plain biscuits for morning tea.
Dick Smith

[On having modest expectations of success] We’ll probably go broke.
Dick Smith

I’ll bring out eight issues of Australian Geographic or lose $2 million – whichever comes first.
Dick Smith

The Business Rhyme Communicate well – be crystal clear, Copy if you can the success of others. Manage as simply as possible – never fear, Give little credit and ask few favours, Business can be fun and your freedom is dear.
Dick Smith

I sincerely hope my generation will leave our world in a condition at least as good as the world I enjoyed when I was young.
Dick Smith

One of the formulas to my success in life is to ask the advice of people who really know what they are talking about.
Dick Smith

As we increasingly butt up against the limits of a finite planet, continuing expansion of our population, consumption and waste will not longer be an option.
Dick Smith



Success has… lulled us into a false belief that we are immune to disaster, that unlike every previous civilisation, our ascendancy will continue unchallenged.
Dick Smith

It took us more than 10,000 years to reach a billion people. We now add that many every 13 years.
Dick Smith

Population is the great taboo, not to be mentioned in polite company.
Dick Smith

Despite Thomas Edison’s invention of artificial light 130 years ago, one quarter of the world’s population still has no access to electricity.
Dick Smith

Why are we no closer to being able to feed, clothe, educate, house and protect so many of the world’s people?
Dick Smith

While the poorest go hungry in ever-increasing numbers, the Western world is facing an epidemic of obesity.
Dick Smith

Every year Australia imports more and more food. And if that is happening here, in one of the most productive agricultural nations on Earth, what does it mean for the rest of the world?
Dick Smith

I am never happier than when I trade in the wise brown land of Australia’s interior – the magnificence of the vast spaces of the Kimberley or the Flinders Ranges, the majesty of Tasmania’s old-growth forests, or the rainforest of the outback.
Dick Smith

My favourite place in Australia is camping under the beautiful river red gums on Coopers Creek just as it flows from Queensland into northern South Australia.
Dick Smith

We are lucky in Australia in being able to easily access solitude, whether it be the fine national parks on the edge of our cities, or the empty stretches of beach found in many places along our coastline.
Dick Smith

[On pulling his helicopter into his garage] People say I need an automatic device but it’s the only exercise I get.
Dick Smith



Five hours on the sheer face of Ball’s Pyramid and you start feeling the pressure. Your equipment has to be able to take it too.
Dick Smith

[On arranging a flight for 460 Smiths to Smith’s waterhole for a charity called The Smith Family] Once everyone was named Smith until they did something bad or dishonest. Then they had to change their names, leaving only good, honest people still named Smith.
Dick Smith

I’m a frustrated Leyland brother…
Dick Smith

Three years ago I thought wouldn’t it be great to make television documentaries that followed the paths of the Australian explorers.
Dick Smith

I’m out to make money. I want to be the Reg Grundy of documentaries.
Dick Smith

I want to show the history of Australia and the history of its explorers through the eyes of myself and my family so that other families will enjoy it too.
Dick Smith

I think it was because I was a bit different, a bit weird… I think when you're different you're picked on a bit.
Dick Smith

I wanted to succeed on my own terms.
Dick Smith

I don’t get my complete satisfaction out of sitting behind a desk. I like to do other things.
Dick Smith

I only try to do things in which I am successful. I am not much good at sport, so I stay away from it.
Dick Smith



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