Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by J. Paul Getty (American Business Person)

J. Paul Getty (1892–1976,) fully Jean Paul Getty, was an American-born British businessman, philanthropist, and art collector. Patriarch of the Getty family and the founder of the Getty Oil Company, he was once the richest living man in America.

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Getty studied at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles and the University of California at Berkeley. Then he studied politics and economics at Oxford.

Returning to America, Getty bought and sold oil leases near Tulsa, Oklahoma, with his father’s help (the oil millionaire George F. Getty.) Getty later moved his base of operations to California. He gained control of several large independent oil companies and began building an immense financial empire. After World War II, he settled down at Sutton Place, a large estate near Surrey, England.

Despite his vast wealth, Getty was notoriously frugal. He was an avid collector of art and antiquities, specializing in “Greek and Roman marbles and bronzes; Renaissance paintings; sixteenth-century Persian carpets; Savonnerie carpets and eighteenth-century French furniture and tapestries,” according to his book The Joys of Collecting (1966.)

Getty’s collection formed the nucleus of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. Upon his death, he left the largest endowment in history to the J. Paul Getty Trust (1953.) The world’s wealthiest art institution, it operates the J. Paul Getty Museum Complexes: the Getty Center and the Getty Villa, the Getty Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and the Getty Conservation Institute. Getty’s British home, a Tudor manor house named Sutton Place in Surrey, is now an arts center.

Getty’s autobiographies are My Life and Fortunes (1963,) How to Be Rich (1965,) and As I See It: The Autobiography of J. Paul Getty (1976.)

British author Ralph Hewins wrote the famous biography The Richest American: J. Paul Getty (1960.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by J. Paul Getty

To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Knowledge, Business

There are one hundred men seeking security to one able man who is willing to risk his fortune.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Security

Oil is like a wild animal. Whoever captures it has it.
J. Paul Getty

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.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Marriage

No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or “get rich” in business by being a conformist.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Accomplishment, Strength

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?
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Work

Without the element of uncertainty, the bringing off of even, the greatest business triumph would be dull, routine, and eminently unsatisfying.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Uncertainty, Risk

My father said: “You must never try to make all the money that’s in a deal. Let the other fellow make some money too, because if you have a reputation for always making all the money, you won’t have many deals.”
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Business, Negotiation

If you can actually count your money, then you’re not a rich man.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Money

I buy when other people are selling.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Business

The individual who wants to reach the top in business must appreciate the might of the force of habit and must understand that practices are what create habits. He must be quick to break those habits that can break him and hasten to adopt those practices that will become the habits that help him achieve the success he desires.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Act, Habits, Practice, Business, Achieve, Habit, Desire, Success, Sin

Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Money

There may be some substitute for hard facts, but if there is, I have no idea what it can be.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Act

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.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Fortune, Excellence

I’ve never been one to bet on the weather.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Weather

There are always opportunities through which businessmen can profit handsomely if they will only recognize and seize them.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Opportunity

If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Wealth

It has always been my contention that an individual who can be relied on to be himself and to be honest unto himself can be relied on in every other way. He places value – not a price – on himself and his principles. And that, in the final analysis, is the measure of anyone’s sense of values – and of the true worth of any man.
J. Paul Getty

In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Experience

The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
J. Paul Getty
Topics: Rightness, Inheritance, Right, Business

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