Quotes About Enron

#1. Enron and 9/11 marked the end of an era of individual freedom and the beginning of personal responsibility.

Jeffrey R. Immelt

#2. Before the New York Times starts running "Portraits in Grief" of former Enron employees, it's worth remembering that even after the collapse, Enron stock is still worth more than the entire Social Security "trust fund."

Ann Coulter

#3. If Enron and Walmart got drunk in Vegas and had an evil corporate love child, Fiendish would be their rebellious teenage son." ~Kate

Cathy Yardley

#4. Enron had already collapsed and filed for bankruptcy protection by the beginning of 2002. But despite complaints from short sellers that corporations had used accounting gimmickry to inflate their profits, many investors thought the crisis at Enron was an isolated case.

Alex Berenson

#5. Unlike top management at Enron, exemplary leaders reward dissent. They encourage it. They understand that, whatever momentary discomfort they experience as a result of being told they might be wrong, it is more than offset by the fact that the information will help them make better decisions.

Warren G. Bennis

#6. Things that have happened with Enron and companies like that, where they've squandered their employees' pension funds, I think it has brought a new level of anxiety. People don't feel like they can trust their employer.

Mike Huckabee

#7. Enron CEO Kenneth Lay has apparently just slipped across the border into Pakistan.

David Letterman

#8. The White House again refused to turn over discussions Vice President Cheney had with Enron officials over energy policy. Cheney said if he had to disclose every time some business donated a ton of money then came in to write its own policy to govern itself, he wouldn't get any work done.

Dennis Miller

#9. We will not rest until the wooden stake is punched through the heart of the Enron lawsuit against us.

Maria Cantwell

#10. Are you getting a big kick out of the Enron scandal? I find this interesting that whenever a big crisis starts, people start showing up in church. So, Ken Lay shows up in church this weekend. Church officials are still looking for the collection plates.

David Letterman

#11. Ken Lay has, does and will continue to accept responsibility for the fall of Enron. He was the man at the controls. But failure is not a crime.

Michael Ramsey

#12. Playboy magazine is now doing a 'Women of Enron' pictorial spread ... Apparently the only thing these women have left to shred is their dignity.

Jay Leno

#13. I think everybody is covering their [posteriors] with the Enron scandal and it was very convenient that Sept. 11 came along to deflect the fact that they should never have been in the White House in the first place. What happened in the election was completely corrupt.

Sandra Bernhard

#14. More money than the crooks at Enron and less taste than a drunk after a bottle of tequila

Maria Lima

#15. Currently, we're finding that about 75 percent of potential jurors have anger or deep-seated hatred toward anyone associated with Enron.

Michael Ramsey

#16. I take responsibility for what happened at Enron, both good and bad. But I cannot take responsibility for criminal conduct that I was unaware of.

Kenneth Lay

#17. Pete Wilson deregulated energy as a pay out to Enron, and we blamed Gray Davis.

Adam McKay

#18. Over the weekend, former Enron executives Jeffrey Skilling and Rebecca Carter married each other during a huge ceremony in Houston. The happy couple is planning to honeymoon for three weeks in front of Congress.

Conan O'Brien

#19. I think that the failures of Enron and WorldCom and other companies are partially failures of investors to recognize companies that are selling for a thousand times nothing, but chances are they may be worth only that.

Arthur Levitt

#20. The big rumor going around is, we may begin bombing Iraq. Or, as the White House calls it, Operation Keep Enron Off The Front Page.

Jay Leno

#21. When Enron collapsed, through court processes, thousands and thousands of emails came out that were internal, and it provided a window into how the whole company was managed. It was all the little decisions that supported the flagrant violations.

Julian Assange

#22. The collapse of Enron was devastating to tens of thousands of people and shook the public's confidence in corporate America.

Robert Mueller

#23. Most unfortunately, Enron's plunge into bankruptcy court also cost many of its rank-and-file employees their savings.

Alex Berenson

#24. I'm a good learner. I can dig in. I knew nothing about mark-to-market accounting when I started the 'Enron' film.

Alex Gibney

#25. Last week convicted Enron crook Ken Lay died of a heart attack. They announced they were going to cremate him. Where he's going, why bother?.

Jay Leno

#26. Bush began helping Enron in the eighties.

Paul Begala

#27. Enron was becoming a virtual cult of creativity, often placing swagger over substance. New ideas were celebrated for their newness, for their potential; tried and true businesses like the pipelines were almost derided.

Kurt Eichenwald

#28. But the most important thing is, Enron did not cause the California crisis.

Kenneth Lay

#29. If you look at the great frauds of all time, Enron had that phantom trading floor. What Herbalife has is it has phantom or fictitious customers.

Bill Ackman

#30. By incentivizing Wall Street players to sniff out inefficient or corrupt companies and bet against them, short-selling acts as a sort of policing system; legal short-sellers have been instrumental in helping expose firms like Enron and WorldCom.

Matt Taibbi

#31. I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.

Paul Krugman

#32. In the case of Enron, we balance our positions all the time.

Kenneth Lay

#33. I take full responsibility for what happened at Enron. But saying that, I know in my mind that I did nothing criminal.

Kenneth Lay

#34. Because the sad fact is that the Enron Corporation and others manipulated with unfortunately great effect the energy market in the West Coast starting in 2000.

Jay Inslee

#35. I've never commented much about my experience at Enron except to say, when I was there, it was a much more pipeline and asset-oriented company.

Richard Kinder

#36. Are you familiar with 9/11? Building 7? You know what was in there? All the Enron stuff. I guess that building went down on its own.

Jesse Ventura

#37. During the Enron debacle, it was workers who took the pounding, not bankers. Not only did Enron employees lose their jobs, many lost their retirement savings. That's because they were at the bottom of the investing food chain.

Robert Kiyosaki

#38. The Enron scandal continues. The U.S. Senate has announced they are going to subpoena Ken Lay and make him testify. Apparently Lay received the subpoena this morning and then, out of habit, immediately shredded it.

Conan O'Brien

#39. Former Enron founder Ken Lay and CEO Jeffrey Skilling found guilty in the Enron case. Ken Lay is so guilty I'm surprised people aren't calling him Congressman Ken Lay. Wait 'till these guys find out in prison that insider trading has a whole new meaning.

Jay Leno

#40. I remember when I did my Enron film, my executive producers at the time felt very strongly that I should mock the Enron executives more viciously because everybody wanted that moment.

Alex Gibney

#41. Ken Lay, the disgraced former chairman of Enron, found a way to escape his legal problems: He died after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges.

Robert Kiyosaki

#42. The Enron scandal calls into question the integrity of the entire capitalist system, which previously we assumed was based on honest, straightforward greed.

Joel Achenbach

#43. I happen to represent Enron here in Houston. We have many good corporate citizens here in Houston. Enron happened to have been one.

Sheila Jackson Lee

#44. People are treating the Stewart case as seriously as Enron when it's really over trivia.

Allan Sloan

#45. Early 2000s, we get Enron, which tells us the books are dirty. And what is our repeated response? We just keep pulling the threads out of the regulatory fabric.

Elizabeth Warren

#46. Well, the manhunt continues for that elusive evil mastermind, but I'm telling you Enron CEO Kenneth Lay remains at large.

David Letterman

#47. Enron Field in Houston, the Trans World Dome in St. Louis and PSINet Stadium in Baltimore are just three of the modern-day coliseums named for companies that have found new homes in bankruptcy court.

Alex Berenson

#48. 'Power Play' is a morality tale for our post-Enron world and - not incidentally - wildly entertaining. Nothing wrong with that.

M.J. Rose

#49. Before Enron, I think people were a bit more naive about the way things worked, and I think Enron pulled the curtain back on unsavoury practices that turned out to be a lot more widespread.

Bethany McLean

#50. Enron would keep its unearned windfall, generated solely because David Duncan didn't know what he was doing.

Kurt Eichenwald

#51. The subculture of felons is in great vogue among adolescents. Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and so forth allow us Republicans to say to America's young people, 'We be thugs.' The GOP may capture the youth vote at last.

P. J. O'Rourke

#52. Some members of Congress now are complaining they are underpaid. They want to propose a pay raise. You can't blame them. A lot of them took a big income hit when Enron folded.

Jay Leno

#53. Yes! We finally captured Martha Stewart. You know, with all the massive and almost completely unpunished fraud perpetrated on the public by companies like Enron, Global Crossing, and Tyco we finally got the ring leader. Maybe now we can lower the nation's terror alert to periwinkle.

Jon Stewart

#54. A jury found former Enron sleezeballs Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling guilty of fraud and conspiracy. Ken Lay? That's not a good name to have when you're going to prison. And Kenny Boy ain't too good either ... I guess in prison they'll have done to them what they did to the stockholders.

Jay Leno

#55. Leopold, one of the reporters who broke the Enron story, is now breaking his own story: how he got addicted to cocaine, committed grand theft, cleaned himself up and found happiness as a 'news junkie.' This scrappy memoir ... might become required reading for aspiring journalists.

Publishers Weekly

#56. You know Texas is - even more now that Enron has bit the dust - it's held up on the back of small businesses.

Rachel Griffiths

#57. At the height of the Enron mania, the company's market value was $65 billion. Once the dust cleared, the final value was $0.

Robert Kiyosaki

#58. What Enron was doing, what caused investors to embrace it in a rapture of baffled awe, was hiding debt.

P. J. O'Rourke

#59. A corporation like Enron is a person with a legal identity and no ethical accountability.

Doug Berry

#60. It turns out Enron workers were not only shredding documents at work, they were having sex at work. Having sex and shredding documents. Those are two things you don't want to get mixed up.

Jay Leno

#61. I wish I could undo what I did at Enron but I can't. I understand that I deserve punishment. Your honor, I accept the prison sentence that you are about to impose and will serve it without bitterness.

Andrew Fastow

#62. Being a politician means never having to say you're sorry. You don't have to say, 'I never should have voted to subsidize that ridiculous Enron project in India.' ... After all, they're greedy businessmen and you're a selfless public servant.

Harry Browne

#63. If it were not for government regulation of big corporations, executives at companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, they could have cheated investors out of millions.

P. J. O'Rourke

#64. Enron's president, Ken Lay, passed away last week. So, I guess even God lost money on that Enron deal. I believe the official cause of death was listed as "karma." The family asked in lieu of flowers, please send some elderly retiree's entire life savings.

Jay Leno

#65. Buying only what you know can end in disaster. Just think about Enron's employees and business partners, the 'locals' who bought lots of its stock because they thought they were in the know.

Kenneth Fisher

#66. Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling appeared before Congress. Do you think they even bothered swearing him in? Now he is denying he lied to Congress last week. He's saying it was just the liquor talking.

Jay Leno

#67. You don't want another Enron? Here's your law: If a company, can't explain, in one sentence, what it does ... it's illegal.

Lewis Black

#68. The Houston Astros want to change the name of Enron Field where they play. I guess the Enron name could cause problems for them. Like players could steal a base and then deny it.

Jay Leno

#69. The collapse of Enron and the subsequent collapse of Arthur Andersen were tremendous tragedies. But as I stated at the time of my indictment on July 8, 2004, failure does not equate to a crime.

Kenneth Lay

#70. These guys [the Catholic church] make Enron look like altar boys.

Dan Rather

#71. Many Enron employees lost 70 percent to 90 percent of their retirement assets after the company indicated that it would re-state profit reports,

Elaine Chao

#72. For business to survive over a long period, it needs to be contributing to society and people's well-being. Otherwise, who's going to want it? Otherwise you end up like Enron or some of these other companies.

Charles Koch

#73. Wouldn't it be great if all of Osama bin Laden's money was tied-up in Enron stock?

Dennis Miller

#74. In the Enron scandal, whistleblower Sherron Watkins is now calling herself Enron Brokovitch. She testified Ken Lay was duped by the other executives. Oh, yeah. When is the last time you got duped and made $100 million?

Jay Leno

#75. Most of the evil of the world comes about not out of evil motives, but somebody saying 'get with the program, be a team player;' this is what we saw at Enron, this is what we saw in the Nixon administration with their scandal.

Philip Zimbardo

#76. Seed catalogs are responsible for more unfulfilled fantasies than Enron and Playboy combined.

Michael Perry

#77. But indeed a market like California is not good for Enron.

Kenneth Lay

#78. Enron is now officially out of the energy business. They are now in a new business: confetti.

Jay Leno

#79. The environment changed with Martha Stewart and Enron.

Steve Martin