... 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 More Quotes by Larry Ellison More Quotes From Larry Ellison Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. Larry Ellison good-enough insane would-be 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 space leadership people 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 support insane fighting 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 running inspirational mean I wish HP nothing but the best. I think HP is an icon. Those of us who had their careers in the Valley think of Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett as role models. We would love to be half as good as they were. Larry Ellison icons careers thinking 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 mad inspirational believe Microsoft is already the most powerful company on earth but you ain't seen nothing yet. Larry Ellison microsoft powerful inspirational 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 views inspirational years If I see Danny Hillis quoted as an expert on MPP one more time, I'm going to puke. Larry Ellison puke more-time experts Oracle's got 100+ enterprise applications live in the #cloud; today, SAP's got nothin' but SuccessFactors until 2020. Larry Ellison sap technology clouds 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 sunset race inspiring 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. Larry Ellison winning america people There will be no new architecture for computing for the next 1,000 years. Larry Ellison next architecture years Being first is more important to me [than earning money]. 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 business inspirational mean 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 life-is-short wall inspirational 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 aunt florida inspirational 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 sales-person business use 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 integrated programming data Building Oracle is like doing math puzzles as a kid. Larry Ellison math inspirational kids It's Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead. Larry Ellison microsoft mankind inspirational