John Paul Getty Quotes

120 John Paul Getty Quotes

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It is not easy to build a business and make a million. It takes hard – extremely hard – work. There are no nine to five hours and no five day weeks for the boss.
John Paul Getty

There is only one way to make a great deal of money in the business world – and that is in one’s own business.
John Paul Getty

The businessman should never lose sight of the central aim of all business – to produce more and better goods or provide more and better services to more people at lower cost.
John Paul Getty

A sense of thrift is essential for success in business.
John Paul Getty

Make your money first – then think about spending it.
John Paul Getty

Legitimate opportunities for expansion should never be ignored or overlooked. On the other hand, the businessman must always be on his guard against the temptation to overexpand or launch expansion programs blindly, without sufficient justification and planning.
John Paul Getty

A businessman must run his own business. He cannot expect his employees to think or do as well as he can. If they could, they would not be his employees.
John Paul Getty

The businessman must be constantly alert for new ways to improve his products and services and increase his production and sales.
John Paul Getty

[On keeping down costs] It is only human for people to give little thought to economies when business is booming. That, however, is just the time when the businessman has the mental elbow room to examine his operations calmly and objectively and thus effect important savings without sacrificing quality or efficiency.
John Paul Getty

A businessman must be willing to take risks – to risk his own capital and to lose his credit and risk borrowed money as well when, in his considered opinion, the risks are justified.
John Paul Getty



A businessman must constantly seek new horizons and untapped or under-exploited markets. … Today’s shrewd businessman looks to foreign markets.
John Paul Getty

The best leader never asks anyone under him to do anything he is unable – or unwilling – to do himself.
John Paul Getty

Once he has started a business, an individual who is naturally thrifty will have an infinitely greater chance for success than another of equal ability who does not possess this quality.
John Paul Getty

An executive can do a much better job is he peels of his business suit once in a while, climbs into a set of overalls and gets his hands dirty down in the plant.
John Paul Getty

If you have a business, make sure that you’re the one who’s running it.
John Paul Getty

The hardest-working and most successful businessmen most often live longest.
John Paul Getty

I bought stocks for investment and not for speculation.
John Paul Getty

Get rich quick scheme just don’t work. If they did, then everyone on the face of the earth would be a millionaire.
John Paul Getty

Bank on the trends and don’t worry about the tremors. Keep your mind on the long-term cycles and ignore the sporadic ups and downs…
John Paul Getty

I began buying common stocks at the depths of the Depression. Prices were at their lowest, and there weren’t many stock buyers around…
John Paul Getty



Sound stocks, purchased for investment when their prices are low and held for the long pull, are very likely to produce high profits through dividends and increases in value.
John Paul Getty

The only part of an automobile that cannot be made foolproof by a safety device is the nut that holds the wheel. By much the same token, there are no safeguards that can protect the emotional investor from himself.
John Paul Getty

In 1906, my father could have purchased all of 70-square mile Santa Catalina Island off the Southern California coast for only $250,000. He turned the offer down…
John Paul Getty

I’m seldom eager to sell simply for the sake of making a quick profit.
John Paul Getty

Current real estate prices aren’t high because they have been driven up by irresponsible speculation, as was so often the case in the past. Prices have risen because a constantly increasing population with money to invest has been created – and continues to create – great demand for real property of all kinds in almost every part of the country.
John Paul Getty

People seem to believe that every millionaire has his millions in ready cash, stored in strongboxes beneath his bed or in a handy wall safe in his library, to hold or squander according to his whim. They also… believe that money can buy them everything and solve all their money problems. In the case of a ‘working’ millionaire – a wealthy individual actively engaged in business – nothing could be further from the truth…
John Paul Getty

A man who becomes rich finds it necessary to adjust to the idea of being wealthy. He must make certain that he maintains his perspective and his sense of values.
John Paul Getty

A businessman’s worries over paying off a $5,000,000 bond issue that has matured are no less great, immediate and personal than those of a $75 a week clerk who has to meet a $500 note that’s falling due!
John Paul Getty

I can’t remember a single day of vacation in the last 45 years that was not somehow interrupted by a cable, telegram or telephone call that made me tend to business for at least a few hours.
John Paul Getty

Friendship is something else that can’t be bought – although there are many who try to sell its counterfeit.
John Paul Getty



You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
John Paul Getty

I recall one man who tried to sell me what he said was a rare 16th Century tapestry, and for ‘a mere $45,000.’ When I told him I wasn’t interested, he flew into a rage. ‘But you’ve got to buy it!’ he shouted, thrusting the tapestry at me. ‘My wife worked months to make it!’
John Paul Getty

Be an individualist – and an individual. You’ll be amazed at how much faster you’ll get ahead.
John Paul Getty

The Rockefellers began building Rockefeller Center, the largest privately-owned business and entertainment complex in the United States – and possibly the entire world – in 1931, during the depths of the Depression. Most American businessmen considered the project an insane one… Nonetheless, the Rockefellers went ahead with their plans and build the great Center. They reaped large profits from the project – and proved that they were right, and that the majority was dead wrong.
John Paul Getty

The truly successful businessman is essentially a dissenter, a rebel who is seldom if ever satisfied with the status quo. He creates his success and wealth by constantly seeking – and often finding – new and better ways to do and make things.
John Paul Getty

The conformist is not born. He is made. I believe the brainwashing process begins in the schools and colleges…
John Paul Getty

The man who will success is the man who is markedly different from the others around him. He has new ideas and can visualize fresh approaches to problems.
John Paul Getty

The successful businessman is no narrow specialist.
John Paul Getty

The architect who designs a breathtakingly beautiful building is often a poor man compared to the tenants who will occupy it. The engineer who builds a dam may well earn less from his labors than the landowner whose acres are irrigated by water from the dam. The architect and engineer have created and built; their success is no less great because they did not earn fortunes from their work.
John Paul Getty

An occasional crisis is good for a businessman. There’s not better exercise for him than to have a few messes to clean up every now and then.
John Paul Getty

[At the depths of the depression] Most people with money to invest were unable to see the forest of potential profit for the multitudinous trees of their largely baseless fears.
John Paul Getty



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