200+ Best Larry Ellison Quotes of All Time

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Looking for the best Larry Ellison quotes of all time? In this post, you’ll discover the ultimate collection of 200+ famous Larry Ellison quotes to inspire and motivate you.

Best Larry Ellison Quotes min

Are you looking for the most inspirational Larry Ellison quotes of all time? Then you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, you’ll discover a collection of 200+ of the most inspiring and best Larry Ellison quotes on persuasion, business, success, life, and much more (be sure to check out the FAQ section for some bonus content as well).

Let’s dive right in.

Best Larry Ellison quotes of all time

Here are some of the top Larry Ellison quotes:

“If I want to relax, I’ll read a book.” – Larry Ellison

“The larger risk was in growing too slow.” – Larry Ellison

“Quality is absolutely the right strategy to kill our competition.” – Larry Ellison

“The only way if you adhere to conventional wisdom, and do everything else that everyone else does – you’re going to lose.” – Larry Ellison

“I have to do the best I can possibly do.” – Larry Ellison

“Being loved is more important than being admired.” – Larry Ellison

“It is my job to go out into the marketplace and win.” – Larry Ellison

“Think things out for yourself.” – Larry Ellison

“Come to your own judgements.” – Larry Ellison

“Don’t simply conform to conventional ways of thinking…” – Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison motivational quotes

“I liked the fact it was risky. The bigger the apparent risk, the fewer people will try to go there.” – Larry Ellison

“Conventional wisdom had it that relational databases couldn’t be made to run fast enough to be commercially viable, so people didn’t enter the race.” – Larry Ellison

“Learning how to sell to a financial guy or an HR or a sales guy or whatever is a big challenge.” – Larry Ellison

“Building our own consulting organization was a two-edged sword. There were as many pluses as minuses.” – Larry Ellison

“I guess a lot of people have dreams of sailing around the world. I was one of them.” – Larry Ellison

“It took me a while to learn how to spend money, but once I got started. I discovered that I have a real talent for it.” – Larry Ellison

“Sailing is completely unpredictable. If Mother Nature decides to make things difficult for you, it can get pretty tense, pretty fast.” – Larry Ellison

“While I enjoy spending my own money, I still hate spending Oracle’s money. I’m very cheap at the office. We have no company planes, no company cars, no company art. Etc.” – Larry Ellison

“Companies make the same mistake. One company spent four and a half years to do an installation, making heavy modification to the software. Madness.” – Larry Ellison

“I think we’re born slaves to reason. And it’s really reason that’s beaten out of us through a process of trying to please our teachers.” – Larry Ellison

“You really have to go back to first principles and think things out for yourself.” – Larry Ellison

“You have to think things out for yourself.” – Larry Ellison

“My favorite color happens to be green, but not because it’s the color of money.” – Larry Ellison

“It is not enough to succeed; everyone else must fail. It’s not sufficient I succeed. Everyone else must fail.” – Larry Ellison

“You idiots. Do what you want. I know I’m right. I’ve spoken my piece.” – Larry Ellison

“I am so disturbed by kids who spend all day playing video games.” – Larry Ellison

“When people start telling you that you’re crazy, you just might be on to the most important innovation in your life.” – Larry Ellison

“It’s my job for Oracle, the number two software company in the world; to become the number one software company in the world. My job is to build better than the competition, sell those products in the marketplace and eventually supplant Microsoft and move from being number two to number one.” – Larry Ellison

“The things that caused problems for me in school are the same things that help me succeed in the world.” – Larry Ellison

“Think of it as you want it, not as it is!” – Larry Ellison

Inspirational Larry Ellison quotes

“In marketing simple messages always win. The market itself has a different set of dynamics.” – Larry Ellison

“The reason I’ve been working more is it’s an extraordinary opportunity. Our industry is going through this tectonic change.” – Larry Ellison

“Some people thought I’d lost my mind.” – Larry Ellison

“If our boat had sunk, we all would have died.” – Larry Ellison

“The most exciting race is… The race towards internet computing.” – Larry Ellison

“The ability to think, the ability to reason… What works and what doesn’t. What’s fair and what isn’t. What’s right and what’s wrong.” – Larry Ellison

“We just say – we can do this and they can’t.” – Larry Ellison

“People like to work with other intelligent and interesting people who like to do interesting things.” – Larry Ellison

“The opportunity in this country is outstanding. Everyone who works hard, maybe a little cleverly, has the opportunity to make almost anything possible.” – Larry Ellison

“Find where everyone else is doing this wrong, where you can do it differently and better.” – Larry Ellison

“Are we are loser? NO!” – Larry Ellison

“There’s still room left for innovation.” – Larry Ellison

“Anything good for the internet we’re very supportive of it.” – Larry Ellison

“Put the stuff on the net… Don’t put stuff in cardboard [boxes.].” – Larry Ellison

“I love the internet. I want information.” – Larry Ellison

“…Don’t mistake any of this for altruism…Fear and greed just doesn’t work. If you want to be successful, quality and service just works better.” – Larry Ellison

“Both my mother and I were determined that we weren’t going to stay on welfare. We always worked toward doing better, toward having a better life. We never had any doubts that we would.” – Larry Ellison

“feel very good about what we did.” – Larry Ellison

“A company “is like a shark, it either has to move forward or it dies.” – Larry Ellison

“I do not give fashionable answers to questions.” – Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison quotes on entrepreneurship

“A corporation’s primary goal is to make money. Government’s primary role is to take a big chunk of that money and give to others.” – Larry Ellison

“Building Oracle is like doing math puzzles as a kid.” – Larry Ellison

“I have had all the disadvantages required for success.” – Larry Ellison

“I think after a certain amount, I’m going to give almost everything I have to charity. What else can you do with it? You can’t spend it, even if you try. I’ve been trying.” – Larry Ellison

“It’s Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead.” – Larry Ellison

“The most important aspect of my personality as far as determining my success goes; has been my questioning conventional wisdom, doubting experts and questioning authority. While that can be painful in your relationships with your parents and teachers, it’s enormously useful in life.” – Larry Ellison

“We will still be enormously profitable and by far the most profitable enterprise software company.” – Larry Ellison

“You can’t worry about it, you can’t panic when you look at the stock market’s decline or you get frozen like a deer in the headlights. All you can do is all you can do.” – Larry Ellison

“Because software is all about scale. The larger you are, the more profitable you are. If we sell twice as much as software, it doesn’t cost us twice as much to build that software. So the more customers you have, the more scale you have. The larger you are, the more profitable you are.” – Larry Ellison

“Everyone thought the acquisition strategy was extremely risky because no one had ever done it successfully. In other words, it was innovative.” – Larry Ellison

I have run engineering since day one at Oracle, and I still run engineering. I hold meetings every week with the database team, the middle ware team, the applications team. I run engineering and I will do that until the board throws me out of there.” – Larry Ellison

“Life’s a journey. It’s a journey about discovering limits.” – Larry Ellison

“There’s a wonderful saying that’s dead wrong. ‘Why did you climb the mountain? ‘I climbed the mountain because it was there.’ That’s utter nonsense. You climbed the mountain because you were here and you were curious if you could do it. You wondered what it would be like.” – Larry Ellison

“Five years from now, I don’t know how I’ll think.” – Larry Ellison

“I think you might see us growing much deeper into banking. You might see us acquiring companies in the banking area. You might see us acquiring companies in the retail area. I think you might see us acquiring companies in the telecommunications. I think you will see us getting stronger in business intelligence.” – Larry Ellison

“If your cash is about to run out, you have to cut your cash flow. CEOs have to make those decisions and live with them however painful they may be. You have to act and act now; and act in the best interest of the company as a whole, even if it means that some people in the company who are your best friends have to work somewhere else.” – Larry Ellison

“Microsoft is already the most powerful company on earth but you ain’t seen nothing yet.” – Larry Ellison

“Those that believe this is merely a downturn are mad. Our industry is going to mature and as something matures, the rate of innovation does slow.” – Larry Ellison

“When you are the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you are basically saying, ‘I’m right and everyone else is wrong.’ That’s a very unpleasant position to be in. It’s at once exhilaration and the same time an invitation to be attacked.” – Larry Ellison

“Bill Gates is the pope of the personal computer industry. He decides who is going to build.” – Larry Ellison

“I saw that we needed to grow but our top line wasn’t growing, so we had to find other ways to grow the business. We had to reshape our business and acquire share in a non conventional way. But most tech leaders don’t come out of a business background. They really have a parochial point of view. All they know are the go-go years of Silicon Valley. That’s the environment in which they were raised.” – Larry Ellison

“I was vehemently against acquisitions. Now let’s buy everything in sight. Well, that’s a slight exaggeration. We are a little more strategic than that. But everything was on sale.” – Larry Ellison

“In order to grow at this pace, there will have to be a couple of acquisitions along the way. The tricky thing is to grow at this rate and maintain a 40 percent operating margin.” – Larry Ellison

“Our goal is simply to become the desktop for e-businesses.” – Larry Ellison

“You have to take a broader view and realize this is an industry like any other – telecoms, Railroads; they went through consolidation. Why shouldn’t the computer industry be any different? This shouldn’t have been a surprise to anybody but it seemed to be, and a lot of people thought I was nuts when I said these things. And that’s why they are alone as a consolidator.” – Larry Ellison

“Bill Gates wants people to think he is Edison, when he’s really Rockefeller. Referring to Gates as the smartest man in America isn’t right. Wealth isn’t the same thing as intelligence.” – Larry Ellison

“I am also involved with all the acquisitions and overall strategy. Now it’s true, I don’t run operations. But I’ve never really run operations. I’ve never had the endurance to run sales. The whole idea of selling to the customer just isn’t my personality. I’m an engineer, tell me why something isn’t working or is and I am curious.” – Larry Ellison

“I’d prefer people read about Churchill and how he wasn’t overwhelmed by Nazi Germany. Amazing; that the morale of a country rested on one person’s shoulders. Extraordinary people carried that country through its darkest hours; truly inspirational. I suppose that’s my theme. Whether it’s a biography or a movie; whether it’s fictional or true, I’m inspired by people doing great things.” – Larry Ellison

“In some ways, getting away from the headquarters and having a little time to reflect allows you to find errors in your strategy. You get to rethink things. Often, that helps me correct a mistake that I made or someone else is about to make.” – Larry Ellison

“So what makes me happy? I was really happy to build this house. That’s it; building things. The trouble with software is that it’s very hard to show your aunt in Florida what you’ve done.” – Larry Ellison

“We have been doing things that are contrary; the things that people tell us won’t work from the beginning. In fact, the only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.” – Larry Ellison

“When you live your life in different ways, it makes people around you become uncomfortable. So deal with it. They don’t know what you are going to do.” – Larry Ellison

“You realize that life is short and fragile; and when you are facing walls of water, you understand your own mortality can change and how quickly things could change.” – Larry Ellison

Top Larry Ellison quotes on success

“When I do something, it is all about self-discovery. I want to learn and discover my own limits.” – Larry Ellison

“I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.” – Larry Ellison

“Great achievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success but by the fear of failure.” – Larry Ellison

“When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you you’re nuts.” – Larry Ellison

“See things in the present, even if they are in the future.” – Larry Ellison

“A corporation’s primary goal is to make money.” – Larry Ellison

“Wealth isn’t the same thing as intelligence.” – Larry Ellison

“When you’re the first whose beliefs are different you’re saying, I’m right and everyone else is wrong.”  – Larry Ellison

“The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.” – Larry Ellison

“Act confident, even when you’re not.” – Larry Ellison

“Taking care of your employees is extremely important and very, very visible.” – Larry Ellison

“If I were 21 years old, I would go into biotechnology or genetic engineering.” – Larry Ellison

“You cannot innovate by copying.” – Larry Ellison

“Our services are social, mobile, and simple, and in the cloud.” – Larry Ellison

“When you write a program for Android, you use the Oracle Java tools for everything and at the very end, you push a button and say convert this.” – Larry Ellison

“To model yourself after Steve Jobs is like, I’d like to paint like Picasso, what should I do? Should I use more red?” – Larry Ellison

“You have to believe in what you do in order to get what you want.” – Larry Ellison

“You have to act and act now.” – Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison quotes on innovation and ideas

“I love problem solving. How to make the closet bigger in the house I’m designing. I know, it sounds funny. SAP is twice as big. Now, there’s no growth–what do we do? It’s all problem solving. Designing, building, problem-solving.” – Larry Ellison

“I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around … anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.” – Larry Ellison

“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.” – Larry Ellison

“I believe people have to follow their dreams—I did.” – Larry Ellison

“You can’t spend as much money as I have, even if you try. I’ve been trying.” – Larry Ellison

“All you can do is every day, try to solve a problem and make your company better. You can’t worry about it, you can’t panic when you look at the stock market’s decline. You get frozen like a deer in the headlights. All you can do is all you can do.” – Larry Ellison

“What they’re doing is not the least bit subtle. The result of all the innovation will be bankruptcy for Netscape,” – Larry Ellison

“We’re very excited about this product. It’s one of our biggest announcements for many, many years. It’s the result of years of innovation and hard work.” – Larry Ellison

“Apple needs to worry about doing something different. It’s back to innovation and creativity.” – Larry Ellison

“If an innovative piece of software comes along, Microsoft copies it and makes it part of Windows. This is not innovation; this is the end of innovation.” – Larry Ellison

“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?” – Larry Ellison

“I started NetSuite. NetSuite was my idea. I called up Evan Goldberg and said, ‘We’re going to do ERP on the Internet, software-as-a-service.’ Six months later Marc Benioff, finding out what NetSuite was doing, and kind of copied it.” – Larry Ellison

“Right now, 70 percent of the people don’t have computers. And where they’re needed most, people don’t have them. We think this will enable anyone to own a computer. We’re aiming at everybody who uses a computer as an information access device. The original idea was to build one cheaply enough to put one on every desk.” – Larry Ellison

“It’s fascinating as we continue to innovate and lead the way in both the application space and the database space. In the very beginning, people said you couldn’t make relational databases fast enough to be commercially viable. I thought we could, and we were the first to do it. But we took tremendous abuse until IBM said, “Oh yeah, this stuff is good.”” – Larry Ellison

“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.” – Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison quotes on oracle

“We think we’re going to be especially strong in platform where we have our two platform brands: our database brand is the Oracle Database 12c, and our programming language brand is this thing called Java.” – Larry Ellison

“Oracle’s latest database, version 12c, was specifically designed for the cloud. Oracle 12c makes all your Oracle applications multitenant applications without you having to make any changes whatsoever to your applications.” – Larry Ellison

“We’ve announced an Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance, a bunch of low-cost commodity servers running Linux, integrated in our case, with InfiniBand – connected with InfiniBand vs. the traditional Ethernet.” – Larry Ellison

“There is no more important platform for Oracle than HP and Itanium.” – Larry Ellison

“I don’t think Oracle and IBM want another Microsoft in Red Hat.” – Larry Ellison

“Joe brings perspective and experience not commonly found in Silicon Valley companies, … In the last few years we have transformed Oracle Corporation into the leader in e-business. Joe will help us clearly and broadly communicate the benefits of e-business and e-government.” – Larry Ellison

“Oracle applications are ideally suited for rapid implementations because our e-business suite is complete and integrated — no application customizations are required,” – Larry Ellison

“We will have more than 4,000 engineers supporting PeopleSoft customers all over the world, and they can stay on PeopleSoft applications or migrate to Oracle applications at their discretion, … It’s entirely their choice. We will not shut down PeopleSoft products.” – Larry Ellison

“The Oracle salesperson gets credit for the Sun sale. I think the Oracle salesperson will appreciate the help of the Sun sales force in making quota.” – Larry Ellison

“We think Microsoft is a very serious competitor going forward in the applications business. It’s not simply going to be Oracle versus SAP.” – Larry Ellison

“In a single step, Oracle becomes the number one CRM applications company in the world,” – Larry Ellison

“In a single step, Oracle becomes the No1 CRM applications company in the world.” – Larry Ellison

“In the last few days, Oracle executives have had the opportunity to speak with the holders of a majority of PeopleSoft shares, … Many of those shareholders indicated the prices at which they would tender their shares.” – Larry Ellison

“He’s always thought I was taking too much of a risk by holding on to my Oracle (stock).” – Larry Ellison

“I can check the Oracle stock price with this, … and then maybe decide to pick up some more stock with it.” – Larry Ellison

“The majority of the people being laid off are Oracle employees, not Siebel employees.” – Larry Ellison

“All of Tom’s experience will be very valuable to Oracle for the next couple of years, … I have no problem with him saying not-nice things about me in the past. I might have said some things about him. I forget. That’s all water under the bridge. We’re on the same team again.” – Larry Ellison

“What is Oracle? A bunch of people. And all of our products were just ideas in the heads of those people – ideas that people typed into a computer, tested, and that turned out to be the best idea for a database or for a programming language.” – Larry Ellison

“We think of Microsoft as our major competitor in the database business, not IBM,” – Larry Ellison

“In most companies, one database replaces dozens of Exchange servers,” – Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison quotes on growth

“We believe that our growth and PeopleSoft’s decline resulted in part from an increase in our competitive win rate over PeopleSoft, and the fact that we are beginning to replace PeopleSoft at a number of major accounts,” – Larry Ellison

“The real highlight of our most recent quarter was the 57 percent growth in our applications business, and this merger is going to make that applications business bigger and stronger,” – Larry Ellison

“No one has ever done this before. We think it will be a huge market and we think it will help drive database growth for years to come.” – Larry Ellison

“Our target has been low double-digit growth for databases, so we were not that far off.” – Larry Ellison

“While that may underscore our database growth in the fourth quarter, it bodes extremely well for database sales in the first quarter, and the second quarter and the third quarter, … It’s because we didn’t sweep the table in the fourth quarter and we will never sweep the table again.” – Larry Ellison

“We think this year, this wonderful year, was our period of adjustment, … We think that transition is behind us and top-line growth will look a lot better this coming year. Our pipeline is just over the moon.” – Larry Ellison

“This is going to be an outstanding year for applications growth – don’t let the 42 percent fool you.” – Larry Ellison

“I don’t think that’s an unreasonable target, … through a combination of acquisitions and organic growth.” – Larry Ellison

“The growth rate is also higher than our database business. It’s a sticky business with the license renewals and is on the high end of our value chain.” – Larry Ellison

“The growth of corporate intranets and the World Wide Web is driving demand for both the Oracle8i database and our applications,” – Larry Ellison

“What is Oracle? It’s people. We rely on our HR department to build this organization, to help find those people, to help grow those people.” – Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison quotes on time

“I’m in two modes when I’m on Lanai: In engineering mode, I’m trying to find the right place for the reservoir and the desalination plant, and looking at designs for new hotel rooms. The rest of the time, I’m in decompression mode. I’m on Hulopoe Beach, going for a swim, or on my paddleboard surrounded by 100 spinner dolphins.” – Larry Ellison

“When I was a kid a long time ago, when the sun rose, I was outside on my bike. If my parents were lucky – poor parents! – I would be home before it got dark.” – Larry Ellison

“Lanai at one time grew 98% of the world’s pineapples. But the world’s pineapples are now grown in two places, Costa Rica and Panama, because no one wants to spend $45 for a pineapple from the United States.” – Larry Ellison

“Guys were knocked down time and time again, but kept getting up to do what had to be done to keep us alive. It’s a tough crew, but the guys were choked up. We were learning of people dying.” – Larry Ellison

“We used to be friends a long time ago, … a good deal of social time with Bill. Less so recently.” – Larry Ellison

“At one time we highlighted BEA for a possible acquisition, but less so now. We have passed them up…and they don’t really want to be bought.” – Larry Ellison

“When you find errors in conventional wisdom-when everyone says A and A is not true-you gain competitive advantage. Only a few times do you have to find errors in conventional wisdom to make a living.” – Larry Ellison

“If I see Danny Hillis quoted as an expert on MPP one more time, I’m going to puke.” – Larry Ellison

“I greatly admire GE, their utterly ruthlessly focused management, to get the cost out and get this integration done.’ Okay, we may make a few mistakes along the way but we are not going to waste any time.’ They make decisions; they are incredibly disciplined and focused.” – Larry Ellison

“A lot of things are based on fashion. Even morality at times is based on fashion.” – Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison quotes on winning

“Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. Sure, there’s the talent, but there also has to be the will. Give me human will and the intense desire to win and it will trump talent every day of the week.” – Larry Ellison

“I think I am very goal oriented. I’d like to win the America’s cup. I’d like Oracle to be the No 1 software company in the world. I still think it is possible to beat Microsoft.” – Larry Ellison

“I love sailing. I like it more when I am winning.” – Larry Ellison

“Winning is not enough. All others must lose.” – Larry Ellison

I know some people are offended by the fact that I’m spending a lot of money trying to win the America’s Cup. I could have given all that money to charity.

I’m addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win.

“When fashion and the pursuit of love is in conflict with reason, too often, fashion in the pursuit of love wins. In my case it didn’t.” – Larry Ellison

“We certainly wanted to win every deal, win every game. We wanted to be the Miami Dolphins, have a 100-percent winning season.” – Larry Ellison

“I suppose you can say to anyone who wants to win so badly, who am I winning for? Am I winning for Oracle shareholders or is this simply a matter of personal vanity? I admit to it, mea culpa. An awful lot of it is personal vanity. I think we are curious about ourselves.” – Larry Ellison

“We would surely lose if we had to face serious competition. But if we were all alone in pursuit of our goal of building the first commercial relational database system, we had a change to win. But we had to be first to market with the new technology…” – Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison quotes about software

“Oracle’s database and e-Business applications have become the software standard for the Internet, … All 10 of the world’s biggest Web sites use Oracle, as do 93 percent of the public dot.com companies. The faster the Internet grows, the faster we grow.” – Larry Ellison

“Well, about four years ago I made a provocative statement saying that the PC was a ridiculous device, … You have to add software to your PC to make it work sometimes. The whole idea of putting a floppy disk into a PC and loading software is ridiculous. The whole idea of backing up the data on your PC is ridiculous.” – Larry Ellison

“Based on our current pipelines the entire management team believes that the overall year should be very strong, … Specifically we expect that Oracle’s software sales will grow faster this year than last. And margins should continue to improve as well.” – Larry Ellison

“As the Internet grows, that’s driving our top line, … Last quarter, our software business grew 30 percent.” – Larry Ellison

“Despite what everyone says, our software is actually cheaper.” – Larry Ellison

“Back in 1995, it was very clear to us that we had to stop doing desktop software and we don’t do any desktop Windows software, … We moved everything to big Internet servers. Our database is designed for the Internet, our applications are designed for the Internet.” – Larry Ellison

“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.” – Larry Ellison

“We decided to abandon the consulting business and go into the software business. A software product offered the ultimate leverage: built it once and sell it over and over again.” – Larry Ellison

“We’re trying to change the nature of the software business and make it much less labor-intensive.” – Larry Ellison

“Oracle Software Powers the Internet.” – Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison quotes on business

“It also strengthens our No. 1 positions in the application business in North America. And it moves us closer to our goal of being No. 1 in applications globally.” – Larry Ellison

“Our applications business is strong and getting stronger, … Oracle’s new e-Business Suite puts every aspect of a business — marketing, sales, service, procurement, supply chain, manufacturing, accounting, human resources — everything, on the Internet. All the applications in our suite are designed and engineered to work together, so customers buying the entire suite don’t need to do any systems integration.” – Larry Ellison

“What can a sales person say to somebody to get them to buy a product that they already use every day if they don’t like it? Nothing.” – Larry Ellison

“Once the business data have been centralized and integrated, the value of the database is greater than the sum of the preexisting parts.” – Larry Ellison

“I think about the business all the time. Well I shouldn’t say all the time. I don’t think about it when I am wake-boarding. But even when I am on vacation, or on my boat; I am on email everyday. I am always prowling around the internet looking at what our competitors are doing.” – Larry Ellison

“If you do everything that everyone else does in business, you’re going to lose. The only way to really be ahead, is to ‘be different’.” – Larry Ellison

“When you’re the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you’re basically saying, “I’m right, and everyone else is wrong.” That’s a very unpleasant position to be in. It’s at once exhilarating and at the same time an invitation to be attacked.” – Larry Ellison

“Being first is more important to me. I have so much money. Whatever money is, it’s just a method of keeping score now. I mean, I certainly don’t need more money.” – Larry Ellison

You’ll see us controlling our costs, and one of the ways we control costs is by managing headcount, … I don’t think there is any company out there now that is not being asked to do more with less.

They are the only ones who destroyed the most innovative company in Silicon Valley in the past decade — Netscape Communications, … They paid people not to ship Netscape’s browser. They’re special.

Most companies don’t want their data co-mingled with other customers. Small companies will tolerate it.

“I didn’t understand that building a big consulting business was making it much harder for us to sell our applications…” – Larry Ellison

“I had to ask people I had worked with for a decade… to leave. I had to fire people. That was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do in business. Asking a bunch of people to leave Oracle.” – Larry Ellison

“Don’t tell us how you’ve been running your business… It’s a classic business mistake to say, ‘This is how we do business; change your software so we can automate it.” – Larry Ellison

“Why do people use heavily customized, one-of-a-kind business systems? Because they had no other choice.” – Larry Ellison

“We do want to sell to business people as opposed to IT people. We think it is a little bit strange that business people aren’t involved in this stuff.” – Larry Ellison

“The business people are the ones who should understand what we are selling and the ones who should make that decision to buy or not buy.” – Larry Ellison

“I cannot run this business and tell the truth to customers. It’s not possible.” – Larry Ellison

“You can’t conform in business.” – Larry Ellison

“It’s a classic business mistake to say, ‘This is how we do business; change your software so we can automate it.’ A new approach is needed. First, you must simply and modernize all your business processes, then move those newly standardized processes to the Internet. Only then can you expect the system to improve your business. Only then can you expect the system to be delivered on time.” – Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison quotes on cloud computing

“They don’t call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I’m no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want.” – Larry Ellison

“We think a modern cloud lets you decide when you want to upgrade. We don’t decide for you.

“Oracle’s got 100+ enterprise applications live in the #cloud; today, SAP’s got nothin’ but SuccessFactors until 2020.” – Larry Ellison

“We’ll continue to expand our footprint… Oracle’s Fusion cloud applications for HCM, CRM and ERP all have a new simplified user interface and an integrated social network that makes our enterprise applications as easy-to-use and familiar as Facebook, while enabling better collaboration and teamwork among your employees and your customers.” – Larry Ellison

“Oracle’s latest database, version 12c, was specifically designed for the cloud. Oracle 12c makes all your Oracle applications multitenant applications without you having to make any changes whatsoever to your applications.” – Larry Ellison

“I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements. 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?” – Larry Ellison

“We’ll make cloud computing announcements. I’m not going to fight this thing.” – Larry Ellison

Top Larry Ellison quotes on life

“This was the first in a pattern of apparently high-risk decisions I made throughout my life at Oracle. But I only ever picked the high-risk approach when I thought that it would increase our chance of winning and our share of reward.” – Larry Ellison

“My life had been focused on work, work, and more work. Oracle had crashed in 1991, and I couldn’t rest until it was healthy again. I didn’t have any time to spend money or think about spending money.” – Larry Ellison

“Life is a miracle…” – Larry Ellison

“I think we have two fundamental drives in our life: we want to be loved and we want to please people. And we know how to think and we know how to reason. And these are often quite at odds.” – Larry Ellison

“If I pick up another billion this coming year, it has no meaning in terms of being able to buy something that I wanted that I couldn’t buy last year. It doesn’t change my life in any way.” – Larry Ellison

“Life is the enlightened pursuit of happiness, not the unenlightened pursuit of as much money as you can accumulate. And the only things that are important in our lives are love and work – not necessarily in that order, but they’re both important.” – Larry Ellison

“We work because work is an act of creation. We identify with it… I look at the company and I think, ‘This is me.’ But that’s not my whole life.” – Larry Ellison

“This was the first in a pattern of apparently high-risk decisions I made throughout my life at Oracle. But I only ever picked the high-risk approach when I thought that it would increase our chance of winning and our share of reward.” – Larry Ellison

“Life is short. I’m not going to spend every minute of it with Oracle.” – Larry Ellison

“A Latin teacher once told me that the ‘F’ she gave me would ruin my life. I didn’t believe it and told her so. A little letter in a square box? It all seemed so silly.” – Larry Ellison

“I enjoy competition. I think life is a series of acts of discovery. We’re all interested in discovering our own limits.” – Larry Ellison

“I didn’t take off three months… I’ve never been gone for more than a month at Oracle in my life.” – Larry Ellison

“I’ve been in fairly serious relationships most of my life. It’s true.” – Larry Ellison

“I like putting myself in demanding, challenging situations. But not to the point where my life is really at risk.” – Larry Ellison

“I work very hard at being a good CEO for Oracle. But at the same time I can’t stop living my life.” – Larry Ellison

“Life is a miracle and I don’t want to spend it just doing Oracle.” – Larry Ellison

Famous Larry Ellison quotes

“We shouldn’t spend all our time wringing our hands worrying about Microsoft world domination. There’s still room left for innovation.” – Larry Ellison

“It’s kind of silly to be in the hardware business and to only have one product.” – Larry Ellison

“Medicine will become personalised, based on your genetics.” – Larry Ellison

“IT has the opportunity to dramatically improve the quality of care and lower the cost of care simultaneously.” – Larry Ellison

“Technology holds the promise of making healthcare more efficient. Better cures at lower cost.” – Larry Ellison

“We need to do two things, find better cures – keep people out of the hospital. Hospital is very expensive. We need to find better cures, better medicines in much lower cost. We need to do both.” – Larry Ellison

“Anything is possible.” – Larry Ellison

“It never ceases to amaze me how the product name can be the difference between success and failure in the technology industry.” – Larry Ellison

“In a great company everybody sells – not just the salespeople.” – Larry Ellison

“What motivated me was the desire to control my environment…” – Larry Ellison

“Built it once and sell it over and over again.” – Larry Ellison

“Being first to finish is what it’s all about.” – Larry Ellison

“If you do everything everyone else does in business, you are going to lose.” – Larry Ellison

FAQs | Motivational Larry Ellison quotes

Here are some frequently asked questions about Larry Ellison and his famous quotes.

Who is Larry Ellison?

Larry Ellison is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist who is a co-founder and the executive chairman and chief technology officer (CTO) of Oracle Corporation.

Final thoughts on Larry Ellison quotes

I hope you enjoyed this ultimate list of the best inspirational Larry Ellison quotes to help you achieve success in your business and life.

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

Larry Ellison profile

Larry Ellison

#1 YouTuber, businessman & philanthropist

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