How does one measure the success of a museum?
— J. Paul Getty
I am - and have always been - a Methodist.
In Japan, I was immensely impressed by the politeness, industrious nature and conscientiousness of the Japanese people.
The overwhelming majority of my rated wealth consists of investments in companies that produce goods and services.
The Roaring Twenties were the period of that Great American Prosperity which was built on shaky foundations.
I have never been given to envy - save for the envy I feel toward those people who have the ability to make a marriage work and endure happily.
A marriage contract to me is as binding as any in business, and I have always believed in sticking to an agreement.
Five wives can't all be wrong.
There are at least 50 cities in the world that would have liked to obtain the Getty Collection.
My yachts were, I suppose, outstanding status symbols.
I vehemently deny that I was born a cynic and a pessimist.
My wealth is not a subject I relish discussing.
Nostalgia often leads to idle speculation.
If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
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.
If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.
I buy when other people are selling.
I have absolutely no intention of marrying Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor.
Nationalized industries are notorious for their inability to operate at a profit.
There are heads of royal families who control hereditary fortunes that defy comprehension.
What I learned at Oxford has been used to great advantage throughout my business career.
A hatred of failure has always been part of my nature.
I have always enjoyed the company of women and have formed deep and long-lasting friendships with many of them.
Whether we like it or not, men and women are not the same in nature, temperament, emotions and emotional responses.
I've never been one to bet on the weather.
The rich are not born sceptical or cynical. They are made that way by events, circumstances.
I can afford to say what I wish.
You cannot further the Brotherhood of Man by encouraging class hatred.
My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.
Without the element of uncertainty, the bringing off of even, the greatest business triumph would be dull, routine, and eminently unsatisfying.
To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business.
Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed.
There are one hundred men seeking security to one able man who is willing to risk his fortune.
Jack Dempsey and I became friends in the very early 1920s.
My love of fine art increased - the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see.
I take pride in the creation of my wealth, in its existence and in the uses to which it has been and is being put.
I was 37 when my father died-and I no longer had any freedom of choice over what I would do with the rest of my life.
During the 1950s, Aristotle Onassis and I formed what grew to be a close friendship and association in several business ventures.
Before marriage, many couples are very much like people rushing to catch an airplane; once aboard, they turn into passengers. They just sit there.
I am neither a homosexual nor a eunuch, nor have I ever taken any vows of chastity.
Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience.
I was brought up in an era when thrift was still considered a virtue.
Governments, of course, can - and do - soak the rich.
Control of a company does not carry with it the ability to control the price of its stock.
You cannot bring about prosperity without discouraging thrift.
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.
If you can actually count your money, then you're not a rich man.
In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.
The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.
