J. Paul Getty
J. Paul Getty
Jean Paul Getty KBEwas an American industrialist. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American, while the 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world's richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1.2 billion. At his death, he was worth more than $2 billion. A book published in 1996 ranked him as the 67th richest American who ever lived, based on his wealth as a percentage of the gross national...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth15 December 1892
CityMinneapolis, MN
CountryUnited States of America
What I learned at Oxford has been used to great advantage throughout my business career.
There are at least 50 cities in the world that would have liked to obtain the Getty Collection.
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.
Nationalized industries are notorious for their inability to operate at a profit.
My yachts were, I suppose, outstanding status symbols.
I have always enjoyed the company of women and have formed deep and long-lasting friendships with many of them.
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 vehemently deny that I was born a cynic and a pessimist.
Jack Dempsey and I became friends in the very early 1920s.
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.
The overwhelming majority of my rated wealth consists of investments in companies that produce goods and services.
Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience.
My wealth is not a subject I relish discussing.