« Watercooler / Ted Turner 42.0
Ted Turner
Ted Turner (bio) is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable television network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. As a philanthropist, he is known for his $1 billion gift to support UN causes, which created the United Nations Foundation, a public charity to broaden support for the UN. Here's a selection of 42 quotes by Turner.
- On Life
- 1.0
- Life is a game. Money is how we keep score.
- On Beginnings
- 2.0
- I just love it when people say I can't do something. There's nothing that makes me feel better, because all my life people have said I wasn't going to make it.
- 3.0
- I decided I wanted to be a success.
- On How to Succeed
- 4.0
- You should set goals beyond your reach so you always have something to live for.
- 5.0
- You can never quit. Winners never quit, and quitters never win.
- 6.0
- Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.
- 7.0
- The worst sin, the ultimate sin for me, in anything, is to be bored.
- On Success
- 8.0
- I think I’ve been able to accomplish as much as I have is because I prefer to live in the present while spending my spare moments thinking about the future.
- 9.0
- Managing isn't that difficult, you just have to score more runs than the other guy.
- 10.0
- The mind is just another muscle.
- 11.0
- I've never run into a guy who could win at the top level in anything today and didn't have the right attitude, didn't give it everything he had, at least while he was doing it; wasn't prepared and didn't have the whole program worked out.
- On Himself
- 12.0
- I don’t have any idea what I’m going to say. I say what comes to my mind.
- 13.0
- I lose my self-restraint and... just get up and dance sometimes.
- 14.0
- If I had any humility I would be perfect.
- On Entrepreneurship
- 15.0
- When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can't compete by imitating the big guys; they have to innovate. So they are less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas.
- On Innovation
- 16.0
- If you’ve got an innovative idea, and the majority does not poohpooh it, then the odds are you must not have a very good idea. When people thought I was loony, it did not bother me at all. In fact, I considered that I must really be onto something.
- 17.0
- It’s time to stop building things we don’t want and don’t need and start building things we do want and do need.
- On Money
- 18.0
- Every few seconds it changes - up an eighth, down an eighth - it's like playing a slot machine. I lose $20 million, I gain $20 million.
- 19.0
- All the money is in the hands of these few rich people and none of them give any money away. It's dangerous for them and the country. We may have another French Revolution and there’ll be another madame Defarge knitting and watching them come in little oxcarts down to the town square and BOOM! Off with their heads!
- On Wealth
- 20.0
- I bet you're all wondering what it feels like to be a billionaire. It's disappointing really. I've learned that great wealth isn't nearly as good as average sex.
- On CNN
- 21.0
- In 20 short years, by all the surveys, we became the world's most respected news source. The New York Times had been there for 100 years. We did it in 20.And you can coast on that reputation for a long time but if you're going to hold that position, which I think would be the most profitable position; too, you have to earn it.
- 22.0
- Even when I started in 1970, I knew that television was having a negative effect on our society.
- On Breaking News
- 23.0
- The only thing I can suggest, and I love it the way it is, but I would like to see us return to a little more international coverage on the domestic feed and a little more environmental coverage.
- 24.0
- And maybe a little less pervert of the day, I mean, there's a lot of perversion around, I know that, but is it really news? I mean, some of it is. I guess you've got to cover Michael Jackson, but not three stories about perversion at the lead of every half-hour.
- On Women
- 25.0
- Men should be disqualified for public office. Women should run the planet. They're better than us.
- On America
- 26.0
- United States has got some of the dumbest people in the world. I want you to know that we know that.
- On the Future
- 27.0
- I'd like to see a world without land mines, with kids out playing. I'd like to see us act like highly educated, civilized human beings.
- 28.0
- There is no greater legacy that we can leave our children and grandchildren than a peaceful and safer world.
- On Life
- 29.0
- Life is like a B-movie. You don't want to leave in the middle of it but you don't want to see it again.
- On the Purpose of Life
- 30.0
- Do something. Either lead, follow or get out of the way.
- On Happiness
- 31.0
- To be happy in this world, first you need a cell phone and then you need an airplane. Then you're truly wireless.
- On Philantropy
- 32.0
- When ABC's John Stossel suggested to Turner that he should stick to being an entrepreneur and that his donations probably wouldn’t go very far, Turner looked at Stossel like he was crazy. Turner, himself, said that his father would help "less affluent students, he would pay their way to college. They wouldn’t even know he did it. He did it quiet."
- 33.0
- Over a three year period, I gave away half of what I had. To be honest, my hands shook as I signed it away. I knew I was taking myself out of the race to be the richest man in the world.
- 34.0
- I’m very busy. Over the last three to four years, I’ve created another life for myself, and even if they had offered me the chairmanship of the company I probably wouldn’t have taken it. It would require all my time, and I’d have to move to New York and I don’t want that. I’ve got this other stuff that I think is in many ways more important. The world and life have been mighty good to me. And I want to put something back.
- 35.0
- As I started getting rich, I started thinking, 'what the hell am I going to do with all this money?' You have to learn to give.
- 36.0
- Well, you can't make people give - that's not giving. They gotta want to give. It's very complicated, but the best way is to lead by example.
- 37.0
- I consider this movement part of the human rights movement... Everybody is entitled to an equal chance in life... I'm going to keep pressing so everyone has an equal chance in the world. There's still a lot of work to do, and we'll keep doing it.
- On Hope
- 38.0
- I would certainly hope that the new pope, having grown up in Germany and World War II, would be against war and against violence of any type.
- On Global Warming
- 39.0
- Not doing it will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.
- 40.0
- I'd say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct or nearly extinct within 50 years. Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me.
- On Death
- 41.0
- I know what I'm having 'em put on my tombstone: 'I have nothing more to say.'
- 42.0
- I'd rather go to hell. Heaven has got to be boring.
