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Larry Ellison Quotes

20 quotes from Larry Ellison — Co-founder and chairman of Oracle Corporation, the database and cloud computing giant..

When you innovate, you've got to be prepared for people telling you that you are nuts.

Innovation

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

Perseverance

You have to act and act now.

Leadership

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

Perseverance

Winning is not enough. All others must lose.

Competition

See things in the present, even if they are in the future.

Vision

You have to believe in what you do in order to get what you want.

Belief

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.

Winning

I just can't accept defeat until I've been carried dead from the field.

Determination

I've always been more motivated by fear of failure than by greed.

Motivation

It's win or die.

Competition

I am a sprinter. I rest, I sprint, I rest, I sprint again.

Work Ethic

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, Playboy interview, 2002

If a company designs both hardware and software, it can build much better systems than if they only design the software. That's why Apple's iPhone is so much better than Microsoft phones.

Larry Ellison, SEC interview on the Sun Microsystems acquisition, 2009

AI changes everything.

Larry Ellison, Oracle earnings call, 2025

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.

Larry Ellison, Financial Times interview, 2006

I don't think anyone looks at it that way — a snapshot of what's the state of your product now, what's the state of their product now. The vast majority of people look at a long-term, five- to ten-year relationship with a supplier — how is that product going to evolve and not just meet my needs today but meet my needs two years from now, four years from now, or ten years from now.

Larry Ellison, antitrust deposition, 2004

Their dreams and my dreams were different. I would never confuse the two again.

Larry Ellison, USC commencement address, 2016

There's a global database for credit with all everyone's credit card information that allows you to have credit cards. There's no system that keeps track of our medical records in a single place that anyone can find in an emergency. What does that say about our priorities as a civilization?

Larry Ellison, Oracle Health Summit, 2024

He stands alone. There's no one else like this, who has prospered in Silicon Valley for 50 years. Other people have passed on; he perseveres.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, on Ellison

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