Quotes by Paul Getty

• There are heads of royal families who control hereditary fortunes that defy comprehension.
• My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.
• Nationalized industries are notorious for their inability to operate at a profit.
• My love of fine art increased - the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see.
• My wealth is not a subject I relish discussing.
• You cannot further the Brotherhood of Man by encouraging class hatred.
• You cannot bring about prosperity without discouraging thrift.
• What I learned at Oxford has been used to great advantage throughout my business career.
• The Roaring Twenties were the period of that Great American Prosperity which was built on shaky foundations.
• Nostalgia often leads to idle speculation.
• Jack Dempsey and I became friends in the very early 1920s.
• Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience.
• I take pride in the creation of my wealth, in its existence and in the uses to which it has been and is being put.
• The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor.
• The overwhelming majority of my rated wealth consists of investments in companies that produce goods and services.
• There are at least 50 cities in the world that would have liked to obtain the Getty Collection.
• The rich are not born sceptical or cynical. They are made that way by events, circumstances.
• Whether we like it or not, men and women are not the same in nature, temperament, emotions and emotional responses.
• I am neither a homosexual nor a eunuch, nor have I ever taken any vows of chastity.
• Five wives can't all be wrong.
• During the 1950s, Aristotle Onassis and I formed what grew to be a close friendship and association in several business ventures.
• Control of a company does not carry with it the ability to control the price of its stock.
• Before marriage, many couples are very much like people rushing to catch an airplane; once aboard, they turn into passengers. They just sit there.
• A marriage contract to me is as binding as any in business, and I have always believed in sticking to an agreement.
• A hatred of failure has always been part of my nature.
• I have always enjoyed the company of women and have formed deep and long-lasting friendships with many of them.
• I have absolutely no intention of marrying Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
• I was 37 when my father died-and I no longer had any freedom of choice over what I would do with the rest of my life.
• I am - and have always been - a Methodist.
• In Japan, I was immensely impressed by the politeness, industrious nature and conscientiousness of the Japanese people.
• Governments, of course, can - and do - soak the rich.
• I can afford to say what I wish.
• I have never been given to envy - save for the envy I feel toward those people who have the ability to make a marriage work and endure happily.
• I vehemently deny that I was born a cynic and a pessimist.
• My yachts were, I suppose, outstanding status symbols.
• I was brought up in an era when thrift was still considered a virtue.
• I've never been one to bet on the weather.
• How does one measure the success of a museum?