T Boone Pickens Quotes
120 T Boone Pickens Quotes
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Risk has always been a part of my life.
T Boone Pickens
At every point in my eighty years, I’ve been faced with a challenge, and in just about every instance I’ve taken it. Even my birth was a do-or-die proposition…
T Boone Pickens
I’ve always thought I was the luckiest man alive, and right from the start I proved it.
T Boone Pickens
My father was in the oil business… He was a lawyer but soon realized that law was no-where near as exciting as oil. So he became an independent land man, convincing landowners to lease him their mineral rights.
T Boone Pickens
My parents were hardworking, thrifty, honest, and self-sufficient. They came from an era when a job was viewed as a privilege, not a right.
T Boone Pickens
I grew up during the great depression…
T Boone Pickens
[On his grandmother] ‘Remember, a fool and his money are soon parted,’ she said when I told her I was going to spend 50 cents on a haircut, a movie, and a bag of popcorn.
T Boone Pickens
[On his mother] ‘Sometime, everybody has to learn to sit on their own bottom,’ she said whenever I asked for too much help with something.
T Boone Pickens
As soon as I was old enough, I started mowing lawns, which I did until I could take on a paper route at age twelve.
T Boone Pickens
[On starting his first paper route at the age of twelve] I began on a street grandly named Broadway of America with the smallest route in town: twenty-eight houses with a penny-a-paper profit per day. When other routes came open next to mine, I talked my supervisor into letting me take them on. Within five years my route grew from 28 papers to 156 and I had saved close to $200, which I hid in a hole under the floor in my closet. It was my first experience in the takeover field: expansion by acquisition.
T Boone Pickens
My father began to run out of luck. Instead of playing it safe with land deals, he started investing in wildcats, which were wells drilled by independent oilmen in uncharted territory. Successful wildcats came with big payoffs – but at great risk. Our family was soon pinched…
T Boone Pickens
I learned important lessons fro my high school basketball coach in Amarillo, T. G. Hull. He told us to play all out but not to dwell on either successes or losses. He taught me that when the game is over, it’s over.
T Boone Pickens
At my father’s urging, I decided to switch my major to geology…
T Boone Pickens
My single-minded focus gave me an edge: I was now going to succeed or fall on my ass. In fact I always think I have an edge, but I love to be the underdog.
T Boone Pickens
Temptation scares me to death.
T Boone Pickens
I decided early on to concentrate on business and home and to omit the distractions and temptations that mess up so many lives.
T Boone Pickens
I felt we needed to grow faster. This could be done either by making a big discovery or by acquisitions. We didn’t have the prospects to make a big discovery, so I began looking at possible companies to acquire…
T Boone Pickens
Dow Hamm… told me something I’ll never forget. ‘Boone, you will spend just as much time on a big deal as on a little deal. In big deals, there’s always serendipity. You’ll find a lot of lagnappe. [Bonus or fringe benefit] Once you get in there you’ll find out what I’m talking about. The bigger, the better.’
T Boone Pickens
I have been frugal in my businesses, always keeping in mind that shareholders are the owners of a company, while members of management are employees.
T Boone Pickens
The top executives seemed to have one thing in common… They were bureaucrats and caretakers who had moved up [the organizational ladder] by avoiding the one thing that to my mind is the difference between success and failure: taking risks.
T Boone Pickens
It amazes me that a trader would invest money based on what a computer tells him or her to do instead of relying on research to predict price movement. Those who trade on technical analysis frequently succumb to a pack mentality because their actions are computer-driven or chart-driven, instead of the result of knowledge and experience.
T Boone Pickens
Some people make a living day trading, but it’s a business I don’t understand.
T Boone Pickens
To make the big money, I’ve found it’s best to take a long-term view, stay focused, and not get spooked by the temporary fluctuations in the market. When I have the odds in my favor, I put my money up and keep it up. If the fundamentals change, I get the hell out of there.
T Boone Pickens
The big money is usually in the long term. The most important thing is to stay with your position.
T Boone Pickens
At sixty-nine, I had spent most of my life winning. Now I was taking some hard hits. From the way our investments were going, it appeared I had some challenges there, too. I was up to my ass in alligators.
T Boone Pickens
People say the three most important things in real estate are ‘location, location, location.’ In natural gas, it’s ‘weather, weather, weather.’
T Boone Pickens
The world has come a long way from the days when I had to run a cable from a brokerage firm to my office upstairs to get stock quotes, or when in the 1980s, the seven helicopters Mesa had under contract would be dispatched to take film photographs of hurricane damage in the gulf. Today information is instantaneous and extensive.
T Boone Pickens
It wasn’t simple luck. It was experience and information.
T Boone Pickens
We’re good at weighing all the risks and drivers and handicapping the situation.
T Boone Pickens
I’m a believer in informal communication within the company.
T Boone Pickens
People respond best to conversation. Talking generates ideas and makes companies – and individuals – grow.
T Boone Pickens
I get a big thrill out of making money, but I don’t get much of a thrill out of spending it.
T Boone Pickens
It’s no secret that some of the biggest mistakes I’ve made were the result of my impatience.
T Boone Pickens
A leader keeps people focused on the future.
T Boone Pickens
If the fundamentals haven’t changed, then I’m not going to panic. We’ll get it all back soon enough.
T Boone Pickens
After a half century in the oil and gas business, I’ve learned a lot of lessons. Few have been cheap.
T Boone Pickens
I understand how difficult it is to find oil. I know how fast it begins to decline once you find it.
T Boone Pickens
The world is running out of cheap oil. It’s a finite and diminishing resource.
T Boone Pickens
You go after the biggest and best reserves as quickly as you can. Nobody in the oil business believes in saving the best for last.
T Boone Pickens
Don’t be foolish with the money you’ve made. No big cars. Second, remember who you are. Stay humble and be generous. It’s the right thing to do, and it feels good.
T Boone Pickens
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