15 quotes from Larry Ellison that prove he is an entrepreneur of awe-inspiring grit

Larry Ellison, the self-made billionaire, says he has “had all the disadvantages for success”. These disadvantages have possibly served as a rite to passage – a passage that the Co-founder of Oracle Corporations has victoriously walked out of. With a standing net worth of $48.7 billion, Ellison’s philanthropy has found its way into his wisdom because he sure has a lot to give away. A college dropout with no formal education in computer science to support his career, and with even lesser support financially, Ellison gracefully walked through his humble beginnings.

Image credits: www.hartmannstudios.com

Here are 15 quotes that will make you wish he were your mentor:

1. “Life’s a journey. It’s a journey about discovering limits.”
2. “I believe people have to follow their dreams—I did.”
3. “Great achievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure.”
4. “When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for people telling you that you are nuts.”
5. “You have to act and act now.”
6. “If you do everything that everyone else does in business, you’re going to lose. The only way to really be ahead is to ‘be different’.”
7. “When you live your life in different ways, it makes people around you become uncomfortable. So deal with it. They don’t know what you are going to do.”
8. “When I do something, it is all about self-discovery. I want to learn and discover my own limits.”
9. “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.”
10. “You have to believe in what you do in order to get what you want.”
11. “The most important aspect of my personality as far as determining my success goes has been my questioning conventional wisdom, doubting experts and questioning authority. While that can be painful in your relationships with your parents and teachers, it’s enormously useful in life.” 
12. “To model yourself after Steve Jobs is like, ‘I’d like to paint like Picasso, what should I do? Should I use more red?’” 
13. “I’m addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win.” 
14. “Being first is more important to me [than earning money]. I have so much money. Whatever money is, it’s just a method of keeping score now. I mean, I certainly don’t need more money.”
15. “All you can do is every day, try to solve a problem and make your company better. You can’t worry about it, you can’t panic when you look at the stock market’s decline. You get frozen like a deer in the headlights. All you can do is all you can do.”