Larry Ellison

Great achievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure.

Lawrence J. Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is the CEO and founder, Oracle Corporation.

Quotes

• When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working. That was my primary goal. Sure, I wanted to make a living. I certainly never expected to become rich, certainly not this rich. I mean, rich does not even describe this. This is surreal.
  • Smithsonian Institution Oral and Visual Histories, Oral History Interview with Lawrence Ellison (24 October 1995).

• I hate the PC, with a passion.
  • Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires (1996), 47"00.

• It's Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead
  • article in The Wall Street Journal (5 March 1998).

• If the Internet turns out not to be the future of computing, we're toast. But if it is, we're golden.
  • Statement in 1999, as quoted in "Oracle's Talking: Should You Be Listening?" by Jeff Sweat in Information Week (7 February 2000).

• Twenty minutes compared to never, that's a lot. Our customer, the Central Intelligence Agency, would get very upset [if] somebody looks in their database.
  • As quoted in "Ellison: Oracle remains unbreakable" CNN (21 January 2002).

• If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is not disruptive at all – you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. … We don't have to fight open source, we have to exploit open source.
  • Financial Times interview (18 April 2006).

• The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?
  • Referring to the term "cloud computing" in his Oracle OpenWorld 2008 speech, as quoted in "Oracle's Ellison nails cloud computing" at cnet (26 September 2008).

• Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.
  • On the previous managers of Sun after Oracles take-over, in "Special Report: Can that guy in Ironman 2 whip IBM in real life?" Reuters (12 May 2010).

• Great achievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure.
  • Evan Elite : Lesson #4: Break Through That Wall.

• So remember this graduates: when people start saying you're crazy, you just might be on to the most important innovation of your life.
  • Ellison's 2016 graduation speech to the University of Southern California, in relation to creating the first relational database