Barry Diller > Quotes

“PowerPoint can be the enemy; structured information often narrows the sieve just when you need to broaden it out in the spaces between information and real understanding.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“taciturn,”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“had enjoyed reading Leon Uris’s QB VII a few years before. I thought it was a decent story, but the reason I bought it as our first project is that no one would sell me anything else.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“Robert Woodruff, who controlled Coca-Cola during its great post–World War II growth, said “the world belongs to the discontented.” To me that’s the greatest single explanation for those who succeed greatly, but it isn’t exactly the definition of a happily contented human.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“I hated all of them and came up with my own statement: “THEY WON, WE LOST. NEXT.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“reticent”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“nineteen-year-old who looked more like a malnourished twelve. He introduced”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“If you’re willing to throw away practicality and you’re lucky enough to have enough resources, there’s always a way.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“I didn’t much like that, but I’d never let money dictate a decision for me.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“I’m sure the cleverest selling can get to me in some way, but if I know that someone is trying to sell me something, I immediately lose interest. Consequently, I am a lousy salesman, especially if the sale is a direct appeal, an assertion of self.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“If you crave the highest highs and the lowest lows in entertainment life, there ain’t nothing like Broadway.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“Put one dumb foot in front of the other and course correct as you go.”
― Barry Diller

“Don’t do anything other than shake the idea back and forth until you resolve that the only known is… it’s a good idea. And then, just get on with it! Make mistakes and correct them as fast as you can, and eventually there will be fewer mistakes.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“I’d learned many times before that I tend to fail first before I succeed. I need to make mistakes and then course-correct as fast as possible, one dumb step to the next less dumb step.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“One of the many wonderful things at ABC was that if you wanted responsibility, you could simply take it.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“I’ve never thought in terms of goals. Yes, if you want to be a doctor, you’ve got to get a license; a lawyer’s got to pass the bar. But if you’re in the entertainment business, setting an absolute goal such as “I want to be head of a studio” is antithetical to ever getting there.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“I didn’t see, as I usually don’t with a new idea, how difficult and expensive it would be to get such a project up and running.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“Managing top-down is exceptionally challenging if you haven’t had the experience of managing from the bottom up.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“I had one philosophy about new ventures: If you like the idea, get on with it.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“Some people truly hate that process; they don’t like collaboration, don’t really like creative conflict. It’s messy and noisy, but I loved every minute of it. The longer it went on, the more stimulated I was, and the more exasperating it probably was to those I could never convert to this extremely demanding process. Those I did convert continue to tell me how much it contributed to their successful careers. Those I didn’t called me the boss from hell.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“In today’s world you don’t need scale to compete, you just need a good idea—”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“I encouraged and insisted upon extreme argument in every creative area. It was loud and it was something of a free-for-all, and every voice got attention if that voice had passion. I was like a bandleader conducting lots of dissonant instruments clanging together. But if you listened, really listened to this cacophony, out would come, after exhaustion and sometimes late into the night, the refinement of an idea into something actionable. I called it “creative conflict,” and since then I’ve prized it as the best process for decision-making. It was sometimes tedious and often more than boisterous, and it was certainly not for everybody, nowhere near politically correct by today’s often oversensitized standards. But I learned to use it to tease out the base truth of whatever was up for discussion, because at some mostly”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“But what really educated me, what saved me, I think, is that I read everything in sight.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“The Winds of War by Herman Wouk,”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“Kellner”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“Is it a good idea, and does it make any common sense?”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“auguries”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“Being protected is a good thing, often the only way to accomplish what you hope to accomplish. But if you yearn to be on your own, untethered, then you must take action, or disappointment with yourself and bitterness will grow unstoppably inside you.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“I never thought much would come out of these internal groups, since stand-alone innovation rarely innovates inside a large enterprise (mostly it just copies what happens next door),”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“prevaricated”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew