The road to success is always under construction.

Bill Gates wants people to think he’s Edison, when he’s really Rockefeller. Referring to Gates as the smartest man in America isn’t right… wealth isn’t the same thing as intelligence.

It’s Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead.

Maui reminded me of San Diego: beautiful, but crowded.

In business, you’re only as good as your last performance.

The most successful people are those who can turn challenges into opportunities.

All you can do is all you can do.

You can’t just be good. You have to be better than good.

When you find errors in conventional wisdom-when everyone says A and A is not true-you gain competitive advantage. Only a few times do you have to find errors in conventional wisdom to make a living.

I believe people have to follow their dreams – I did.

The best ideas come from the most unexpected places.

Right now, 70 percent of the people don’t have computers. And where they’re needed most, people don’t have them. We think this will enable anyone to own a computer. We’re aiming at everybody who uses a computer as an information access device. The original idea was to build one cheaply enough to put one on every desk.

When you live for others’ opinions, you are dead.

You cannot innovate by copying.

We saw – we conducted the experiment. I mean, it’s been done. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. We saw Apple without Steve Jobs. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. Now, we’re gonna see Apple without Steve Jobs.

There’s no substitute for hard work.

I love competition. I love the thrill of competing.

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.

I’m right, and everyone else is wrong.

It’s surreal to think that I own this beautiful island. It doesn’t feel like anyone can own Lanai. What it feels like to me is this really cool 21st-century engineering project, where I get to work with the people of Lanai to create a prosperous and sustainable Eden in the Pacific.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

The more you compete, the more you realize what you’re capable of.

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.

Act confident, even when you’re not.

What is Oracle? It’s people. We rely on our HR department to build this organization, to help find those people, to help grow those people.

You have to be passionate about what you’re doing. Otherwise, it’s just a job.

I love technology. I want it to be mine.

Think of it as you want it, not as it is!

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.

Our goal is very simply to become the desktop for e-businesses.

I don’t believe in boundaries. Boundaries are things that keep you from achieving your goals.

Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.

Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.

If I were 21 years old, I would go into biotechnology or genetic engineering.

We’ve announced an Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance, a bunch of low-cost commodity servers running Linux, integrated in our case, with InfiniBand – connected with InfiniBand vs. the traditional Ethernet.

I’m much more interested in ideas than in money.

You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

Most companies don’t want their data co-mingled with other customers. Small companies will tolerate it.

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.

We think we’re going to be especially strong in platform where we have our two platform brands: our database brand is the Oracle Database 12c, and our programming language brand is this thing called Java.

The biggest challenge is to stay ahead of your competitors.

When you live for others’ opinions, you are dead. I don’t want to live thinking about how I’ll be remembered.

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.

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

They don’t call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I’m no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

I think the most difficult thing about being successful is finding someone who is happy for you.

Oracle’s got 100+ enterprise applications live in the #cloud; today, SAP’s got nothin’ but SuccessFactors until 2020.

Winning is not enough. All others must lose.

We think a modern cloud lets you decide when you want to upgrade. We don’t decide for you.

I’m not interested in technology for technology’s sake. I’m interested in technology that improves people’s lives.

You have to believe in what you’re doing.

I think after a certain amount, I’m going to give almost everything I have to charity. What else can you do with it? You can’t spend it, even if you try. I’ve been trying.

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

I am so disturbed by kids who spend all day playing videogames.

Success is not just about what you achieve, but about what you inspire others to achieve.

Life’s a journey. It’s a journey about discovering limits.

You have to act and act now.

Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane.

Be careful about virtual relationships with artificially intelligent pieces of software.

The only way to be successful is to be a little bit crazy.

If the Internet turns out not to be the future of computing, we’re toast. But if it is, we’re golden.

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

I believe people have the right to be foolish. As long as they pay the price.

Autonomy was shopped to us. We looked at the price and thought it was absurdly high.

I’m a big believer in a good night’s sleep. I need my eight hours.

The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.

Building Oracle is like doing math puzzles as a kid.

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

I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.