Words matter. These are the best J. Paul Getty Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
A marriage contract to me is as binding as any in business, and I have always believed in sticking to an agreement.
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.
You cannot bring about prosperity without discouraging thrift.
The overwhelming majority of my rated wealth consists of investments in companies that produce goods and services.
Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.
Five wives can’t all be wrong.
Governments, of course, can – and do – soak the rich.
Nostalgia often leads to idle speculation.
Before marriage, many couples are very much like people rushing to catch an airplane; once aboard, they turn into passengers. They just sit there.
Whether we like it or not, men and women are not the same in nature, temperament, emotions and emotional responses.
My yachts were, I suppose, outstanding status symbols.
Rhetoric and dialectics can’t change what I have learned from observation and experience.
Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever captures it has it.
In Japan, I was immensely impressed by the politeness, industrious nature and conscientiousness of the Japanese people.
Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed.
I have always enjoyed the company of women and have formed deep and long-lasting friendships with many of them.
How does one measure the success of a museum?
If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.
The man who comes up with a means for doing or producing almost anything better, faster or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips.
I’ve never been one to bet on the weather.
The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor.
My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.
I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success.
Without the element of uncertainty, the bringing off of even, the greatest business triumph would be dull, routine, and eminently unsatisfying.
A hatred of failure has always been part of my nature.
I am – and have always been – a Methodist.
There are at least 50 cities in the world that would have liked to obtain the Getty Collection.
I buy when other people are selling.
Control of a company does not carry with it the ability to control the price of its stock.
During the 1950s, Aristotle Onassis and I formed what grew to be a close friendship and association in several business ventures.
I was brought up in an era when thrift was still considered a virtue.
I am neither a homosexual nor a eunuch, nor have I ever taken any vows of chastity.
Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you’re just sitting still?
In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.
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.
The Roaring Twenties were the period of that Great American Prosperity which was built on shaky foundations.
I vehemently deny that I was born a cynic and a pessimist.
There are heads of royal families who control hereditary fortunes that defy comprehension.
If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.
Jack Dempsey and I became friends in the very early 1920s.
