Ross Perot Quotes

#1. Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face. You'd be amazed how many companies don't listen to their customers.

Ross Perot

#2. Most new jobs won't come from our biggest employers. They will come from our smallest. We've got to do everything we can to make entrepreneurial dreams a reality.

Ross Perot

#3. Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.

Ross Perot

#4. I honestly believe I'd make one of the worst elected officials in the history of this country.

Ross Perot

#5. Anything that is excellent or praiseworthy stands moment by moment on the cutting edge and must be constantly fought for. Well placed priorities always sit on the edge.

Ross Perot

#6. You don't have to be the biggest to beat the biggest.

Ross Perot

#7. Japan is our rival, not our enemy. Japan is a competitor ... Bashing a Toyota won't make a better car.

Ross Perot

#8. If you see a snake, just kill it - don't appoint a committee on snakes.

Ross Perot

#9. I was born rich. Not in tangible things ... but rich in the parents I had.

Ross Perot

#10. Business is not just doing deals; business is having great products, doing great engineering, and providing tremendous service to customers. Finally, business is a cobweb of human relationships.

Ross Perot

#11. The best way to make money is not to have money as your primary goal. I've seen great people come into the business world primarily motivated to make money. Almost without exception they failed.

Ross Perot

#12. Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.

Ross Perot

#13. The first EDSer to see a snake kills it. At GM, first thing you do is organize a committee on snakes. Then you bring in a consultant who knows a lot about snakes. Third thing you do is talk about it for a year.

Ross Perot

#14. Don't run your life by what's legal or illegal. Run your life based on what's right or wrong ...

Ross Perot

#15. Talk is cheap. Words are plentiful. Deeds are precious.

Ross Perot

#16. Success is like Halley's comet, you know. Every now and then it just comes around.

Ross Perot

#17. When building a team, I always search first for people who love to win. If I can't find any of those, I look for people who hate to lose.

Ross Perot

#18. Big is not beautiful. Big is inefficient.

Ross Perot

#19. The debt is like a crazy aunt we keep down in the basement. All the neighbors know she's there, but nobody wants to talk about her.

Ross Perot

#20. If we decide to take this level of business creating ability nationwide, we'll all be plucking chickens for a living.

Ross Perot

#21. We have to succeed, so we will.

Ross Perot

#22. Life is like a cobweb, not an organization chart.

Ross Perot

#23. The most successful people in the world aren't usually the brightest. They are the ones who persevere.

Ross Perot

#24. Generosity is something we learn, from our parents, schools and community.

Ross Perot

#25. The one thing I know through experience ... is that people don't know why they come to work until they don't have to come to work.

Ross Perot

#26. War has rules, mud wrestling has rules - politics has no rules.

Ross Perot

#27. If we did not have such a thing as an airplane today, we would probably create something the size of N.A.S.A. to make one.

Ross Perot

#28. Eagles don't flock, you have to find them one at a time.

Ross Perot

#29. Life is never more fun than when you're the underdog competing against the giants.

Ross Perot

#30. Revitalizing General Motors is like teaching an elephant to tap dance. You find the sensitive spot and start poking.

Ross Perot

#31. Failures are like skinned knees, painful but superficial.

Ross Perot

#32. So many people spend their lives chasing money and end up as the richest men in the cemetery. I don't want to be like that.

Ross Perot

#33. Anybody can cut prices, but it takes brains to produce a better article.

Ross Perot

#34. There is no accountability in the public school system - except for coaches. You know what happens to a losing coach. You fire him. A losing teacher can go on losing for 30 years and then go to glory.

Ross Perot

#35. If someone as blessed as I am is not willing to clean out the barn, who will?

Ross Perot

#36. It takes five years to design a new car in this country. Heck, we won World War II in four years.

Ross Perot

#37. Never ask anyone to do what you haven't done before and wouldn't do again. That's a pretty fundamental rule in leadership ... treat them like you treat yourself. Things you don't like, they don't like.

Ross Perot

#38. Punishing honest mistakes stifles creativity. I want people moving and shaking the earth and they're going to make mistakes.

Ross Perot

#39. One voice is tiny, and alone it cannot be heard above the din of politics as usual. The peoples voice, when it cries as one, is a great roar.

Ross Perot

#40. I love this country, I love the principles on which it's founded.

Ross Perot

#41. Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read.

Ross Perot

#42. If we really want to know who is responsible for the mess we're in, all we have to do is look in the mirror. You and I own this country, and we are responsible for what happens to it.

Ross Perot

#43. In plain Texas talk, it's 'do the right thing'

Ross Perot

#44. If you can't stand a little sacrifice and you can't stand a trip across the desert with limited water, we're never going to straighten this country out.

Ross Perot

#45. Which one of the three candidates would you want your daughter to marry?

Ross Perot

#46. A weak currency is the sign of a weak economy, and a weak economy leads to a weak nation.

Ross Perot

#47. In business, people are held accountable. In Washington, nobody is held accountable. In business, people are judged on results. In Washington, people are measured by their ability to get reelected.

Ross Perot

#48. I came from an environment where if you see a snake, you kill it. At General motors, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is to hire a consultant on snakes.

Ross Perot

#49. The American dream. Those three short, simple words encompass the hopes and aspirations of all the peoples on earth. The words are not only short and simple. They are also fragile.

Ross Perot

#50. This planet is our home. If we destroy the planet, we've destroyed our home, so it is fundamentally important.

Ross Perot

#51. My role in life is that of the grain of sand to the oyster-it irritates the oyster and out comes a pearl.

Ross Perot

#52. [In Moscow] we got through to [Soviet leaders] Brezhnev and Kosygin on the telephone. I think it was because nobody had ever tried to call them at home before.

Ross Perot