Rupert Murdoch Quotes

200 Rupert Murdoch Quotes

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If… polls reflected reality, there would be a boom in literary supplements.
Rupert Murdoch

We follow public taste more than we lead it, which is nothing to boast about.
Rupert Murdoch

The socially mobile are portrayed as uncaring, businessmen as crooks. Moneymaking is to be despised.
Rupert Murdoch

[On the Dalai Lama] I have heard cynics who say he’s a very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes.
Rupert Murdoch

I’ve just got to see that each one of those hours is well spent.
Rupert Murdoch

[On why he had allowed ‘Page 3’ to develop] I don’t know. The editor did it when I was away.
Rupert Murdoch

Mr [Kerry] Packer spends his time travelling, playing polo and other activities.
Rupert Murdoch

I’ve told the world when people have come to me and said, ‘Who’s this fellow [Kerry] Packer from Australia?’ you know, ‘I trust him, I always have absolutely’, so my first reaction was to feel angry and let down.
Rupert Murdoch

[Frank] Packer must be the biggest crook in Australian newspapers, but equally he is the cleverest.
Rupert Murdoch

[Pointing at Frank Packer whilst talking to Angus McLachlan the then managing director of Fairfax] He’s a sick man. If we’re not careful we will have the Melbourne Herald in Sydney. We should do a deal. You should take the Women’s Weekly and I should take the Telegraph.
Rupert Murdoch



[On passing the baton to one of his children in 2003] I think it is a very, very human motive to see your work carried forward by one of your own.
Rupert Murdoch

[On being told by Jim Cramer in 1996 that he thought the Dow Jones was worth $74 a share when it was trading at about $35] I’ll pay that.
Rupert Murdoch

[On the Wall Street Journal] I’d love to own it someday but the Bancrofts will never sell.
Rupert Murdoch

[To Mr McPherson on negotiating about the purchase of the Wall Street Journal] The danger is that so many bankers, lawyers and directors are now ‘in the know’ something may be said which would not be in the interests of either side.
Rupert Murdoch

I’m not saying it’s impossible. I would say it’s unlikely.
Rupert Murdoch

We were a huge catalyst for change.
Rupert Murdoch

[On the internet crash] We finally got beaten over the head by the investment community to get into it. But nearly all our investments, at least 50 percent were paid for in exchange for advertising. We’ve not lost much cash in it at all.
Rupert Murdoch

I don’t pay attention to banner ads. They annoy me.
Rupert Murdoch

We need to push ourselves to make as many reductions as possible in our own energy use first… and that takes time. But we must do this quickly… the climate will not wait for us.
Rupert Murdoch

The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.
Rupert Murdoch



[On Robert Maxwell] He’d said some rather things about me to the press. And some nasty things about Australians in general. I couldn’t let him get away with that.
Rupert Murdoch

I never had a stormy relationship with my father at all. He died when I was only twenty-one and away in Europe in college, and I had enormous respect for him.
Rupert Murdoch

[On his father Sir Keith Murdoch] He was a great journalist who started as a reporter and finally became the chief executive of a company that he built, but was not a shareholder of. He was able to buy a little newspaper in Adelaide which he left to my sisters and me.
Rupert Murdoch

I was brought up in a publishing home, a newspaper man’s home, and was excited by that, I suppose. I saw that life at close range, and after the age of ten or twelve never really considered any other.
Rupert Murdoch

If you’re in the media, particularly newspapers, you are in the thick of all the interesting things that are going on in a community… I can’t imagine any other life that one would want to dedicate oneself to.
Rupert Murdoch

I sensed the excitement and the power. Not raw power, but the ability to influence at least the agenda of what was going on. I think it led me to grow up being very idealistic…
Rupert Murdoch

I’ve always been much more interested in the content of our newspapers, political positions day to day, the thrill of communicating with people through words than I am in the pure business aspects.
Rupert Murdoch

The idea of communicating news and ideas, and of transmitting other people’s ideas is still the fascination. It’s a lot more fun than distributing popular entertainment.
Rupert Murdoch

My father – who was a great journalist – was not really an owner…
Rupert Murdoch

I guess I was always reaching up to be bigger than just a little paper in Adelaide, to have enough financial muscle to be able to buy your own writers and your own cartoonists, and that led us to buying or starting newspapers beyond Adelaide… And when you get on that, it’s a bit of a treadmill.
Rupert Murdoch



[On a shareholders vote Robert] Maxwell accused us of stacking the meeting. I made sure that the hall was full of our people. We didn’t turn anyone away, but we had our numbers there is case…
Rupert Murdoch

[On initially purchasing News of the World] I had no choice. Once I got in there and saw how badly the organization was run, I had to clean house. Everything was dreadfully old-fashioned and stultified.
Rupert Murdoch

[On Robert Maxwell] Maxwell can be very tough. He’s brilliant, but knows nothing about publishing newspapers.
Rupert Murdoch

You see opportunities, you’re young and you get silly and buy the News of the World in London which was nearly bankrupt.
Rupert Murdoch

Seizing opportunities we started the London Sun virtually for nothing. With the arrogance of the early success of that, we said, ‘Well, we’d better come to America.’ And we found it very difficult here.
Rupert Murdoch

Mr [Gough] Whitlam is going out not with a stance of dignity but with a whimper.
Rupert Murdoch

[On purchasing the New York Post in 1976] I may have paid too much for it, but it was the chance of my lifetime.
Rupert Murdoch

If you’re young and reckless, you take risks pretty easily. And then - it’s in your nature, I guess – but if you have some degree of success, not always, but some degree of success, it emboldens you to do more. And I guess, if you have some gambling genes in you somewhere, you get some genetic enjoyment of risk. Some people enjoy risk and some people hate it.
Rupert Murdoch

[To Clay Felker – Profligate spending is] A lifetime habit with you. You’re too old to change your spots.
Rupert Murdoch

[On Clay Felker] You and I could never work together.
Rupert Murdoch



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