T Boone Pickens Quotes
120 T Boone Pickens Quotes
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When I’m expected to do something, I always want to do more.
T Boone Pickens
Some gifts extend beyond a lifetime, which is the case with my single biggest gift: $165 million to Oklahoma State University’s athletic department.
T Boone Pickens
I had real skin in the game. I certainly wasn’t going to have my name on a loser.
T Boone Pickens
I’m eighty years old. I want results now…
T Boone Pickens
Victory – that’s what it’s about.
T Boone Pickens
[To a group of graduating seniors] I would gladly give it all to any one of you to be where you are sitting right now. There’s only one catch. If you make the trade, you have to be seventy-nine and I get to be eighteen again.
T Boone Pickens
[In 2009] Every person who can work and stay active has an obligation to do so… The most recent estimates give the Social Security trust fund only until 2045 before it runs out of money.
T Boone Pickens
[On his solution to solve the Social Security trust fund running out of money around 2045] ‘Have everyone work as long as I have. That’ll solve the problem.’ My solutions tend to be pretty straightforward.
T Boone Pickens
[On healthy aging] It’s necessary to stay physically and mentally fit to keep yourself in the game. We are the only ones who can put limits on ourselves.
T Boone Pickens
Established giants tend to have two problems: a cookie-cutter mentality and overly burdensome bureaucracies. That’s not the way I work.
T Boone Pickens
USA Today labeled me ‘a clean-energy rock star’. An eighty-year-old rock star is more like it. Either way, it was definitely a new look.
T Boone Pickens
‘Boys,’ I said ‘this is it. We’ve got to figure out a way to make $300 million, and we’ve got to make it fast. We’ve lost too much money in the Gulf of Mexico. We can’t drill our way out of this one. A field goal won’t do it – we need a touchdown.’
T Boone Pickens
I was used to having my back against the wall. But $300 million was a lot of money…
T Boone Pickens
[Even as a child] If a person depended on me to do something, I would be damned before I failed him.
T Boone Pickens
My grandmother, whom I adored, gave me advice, most of which centered on the idea that the best life was ‘a life of moderation.’ Grandmother was a great believer in the old-fashioned virtues – hard work, thrift, forthrightness. She owned four rental houses, and one summer she asked me if I wanted to make some money by mowing the lawns. I said, ‘Sure.’ She asked me to make an offer for the summer. ‘Grandmother, I’ll mow them once a week for 10 cents a lawn.’ ‘Fine,’ she said. Within a week, I realized I had sold out cheap, and I thought Grandmother would let me off the hook. She turned me down. ‘This will be good training for you,’ she said. ‘Next time, you’ll think a little longer about what you’re committing to before you jump into it.’
T Boone Pickens
‘Root hog or die,’ meaning, ‘Get in and compete or fail.’
T Boone Pickens
It was my Mother who had decided that I should be called by my middle name, Boone, instead of Tom, like my father. No child like to be different, and I was no exception. It was embarrassing to have to repeat my name two or three times before people would understand, and I was afraid that kids might make fun of me. I had been mistakenly called Booner, Ben, Bobby – even Jermone! My mother saw things differently. ‘Once people understand your name,’ she said proudly, ‘they won’t ever forget it.’
T Boone Pickens
[On being told ‘You always start worrying too early’] It’s a habit I’ve overcome.
T Boone Pickens
My father was better at assessing risk in a game of five-card draw than in looking for oil.
T Boone Pickens
I can’t remember a year when I didn’t make more money on outside investments – the stock and commodities markets – than on my Mesa salary.
T Boone Pickens
If Jack Nicklaus thinks he has pressure puts, he should try eighteen holes after he’s lost $2 million in two days, wondering how much more he’s losing with every tick of the futures market.
T Boone Pickens
A commodity futures play is one of the purest forms of entrepreneurship. The keys to success are an accurate analysis, a willingness to take risk, and the ability to act. Once you’ve made the decision, just stand by, because you’re likely to get your answer quickly.
T Boone Pickens
If you are a consistent moneymaker, you will be a good decision-maker. Sometimes the window of opportunity is open only briefly. Waiting isn’t a decision, although many people think it is.
T Boone Pickens
Many managers won’t face reality when assessing their own deals. They either panic and jump out of the boat or refuse to admit they have a problem. Stupidity may be part of the problem, but ego is probably the biggest problem.
T Boone Pickens
Money is a report card.
T Boone Pickens
I’ve known many men who set a million dollars as their net-worth goal, and after they became millionaires they gave up making money and chose full-time hunting or golfing. I think that’s fine, but it isn’t what I want to do. Three days of golf in a row are about all I can stand.
T Boone Pickens
Be careful of the limits you set for yourself… Personally, I don’t have a limit.
T Boone Pickens
Money is to be respected; one of the worst things you can do is to handle another person’s money without respect for how hard it was to earn.
T Boone Pickens
My grandmother and mother often said, ‘Always get your money’s worth, and don’t buy things you don’t need.’ I’m good at getting my money’s worth.
T Boone Pickens
I used to say that I had two suits – a dark one and a light one – a couple of bird dogs, and a good shotgun, I would be happy. Now I seem to need fifteen suits, two dozen bird dogs, a good shotgun, and a set of golf clubs.
T Boone Pickens
It seems as if everything I do is geared to saving time. I used to get a lot of speeding tickets… Now we fly in a small airplane. It’s faster – and it cuts out the tickets.
T Boone Pickens
There are three kinds of managements. Some see changes coming well in advance and may even accelerate the process. Some see changes coming just in time to adjust before it’s too late. Some never see changes coming, so they don’t adjust. The last group gets run over by change, and it almost always comprises the arrogant, iron-headed managements who have had it their way for years… Good-bye to the management that can’t adjust.
T Boone Pickens
A wise woman, Grace Hopper, now retired, was the best known female admiral in the U.S. Navy. She expressed my management philosophy succinctly when she said, ‘You don’t manage people, you manage things. You lead people.’ She was right.
T Boone Pickens
You have to serve many apprenticeships throughout your life. Show me somebody who won’t serve an apprenticeship, and I’ll show you somebody who won’t go very far.
T Boone Pickens
I’m convinced that you can be old at thirty or young at seventy – it’s all up to you.
T Boone Pickens
Some companies operate on a two, five or ten year plan. At Mesa, we’re a different company every two years.
T Boone Pickens
There comes a time when the meaning of success changes.
T Boone Pickens
Predictability can lead to failure.
T Boone Pickens
A long time ago, a guy told me that the best time to plan a tree is twenty years ago. But if you didn’t plant it then, the next best time is today.
T Boone Pickens
There is always room at the top.
T Boone Pickens
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