The Billionaire and the Mechanic Quotes

“Sailors didn’t train for hurricanes, because they weren’t supposed to be in hurricanes.”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“Ernest Gann’s Fate Is the Hunter: A Pilot’s Memior—“The peril was instantly there and then almost as instantly not there. We peeped behind the curtain, saw what some dead men have seen, and survived with it engraved forever on our memories. That one second’s difference, its selection, the reason for it, must haunt the rest of my living days whatever their number.”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“He could look at the reams of data that came in off the boat’s sensors and he could get feedback from the sailors. He understood the predictions that were made and the data-driven analysis. But his years of experience had taught him there was nothing like listening to the boat herself.”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“September 1962, John Kennedy spoke before the start of the America’s Cup about the allure of water and of the Cup, saying, “All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea—whether it is to sail or to watch it—we are going back from whence we came.”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“He had told his wife, Melinda, “If you’re fast, you don’t have to make hard decisions. When you’re slower, you have to pull rabbits out of your hat and do incredible things with the maneuvers, and push the rules so far that you almost cross a line.”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“Dickson said, “the Americans on the team will debate how it should be done and who will do it, while the Kiwis will grab a shovel and move the pile.”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“The wood itself came from the Pacific Northwest by way of Japan. Because the best wood grown in North America was almost always acquired by the Japanese,”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“12-Meter-class boat (the “12 meters” had to do with a formula of measurements, not the length of the boat).”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“first modern World Series and nearly two decades before college football was born on the East Coast. The first regatta was held as part of the International Exhibition, or “world’s fair,” in London, which opened on May Day 1851 and celebrated the latest in industry, arts, and science—from the precursor to the telegraph to the sewing machine.”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“George Mallory said the reason he wanted to climb Everest was because ‘it’s there.’ I don’t think so. I think Mallory was wrong. It’s not because it’s there. It’s because we’re there, and we wonder if we can do it.”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“His hobbies, by his own admission, were a constant search for alternative stress.”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“business was a marathon without end; there was always another quarter. In sports, the buzzer sounds and time runs out.”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“There was a clarity to be found in sports that couldn’t be had in business.”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

“ “I’m talking about greatness, about taking a lever to the world and moving it,” Larry Ellison said, walking the grounds of his new Woodside property in spring 2000 with his best friend, Steve Jobs. “I’m not talking about moral perfection. I’m talking about people who changed the world the most during their lifetime.”

Jobs, who had returned to Apple three years earlier, enjoyed the conversational volleying with Larry about who was history’s greatest person. The Apple co-founder placed Leonardo da Vinci and Gandhi as his top choices, with Gandhi in the lead.
Leonardo, a great artist and inventor, lived in violent times and was a designer of tanks, battlements, ramparts, and an assortment of other military tools and castle fortifications. Larry joked that had Leonardo not been gay, he would have been “a perfect fit for the Bush administration.”

Jobs, who had studied in India, cited Gandhi’s doctrine of nonviolent revolution as an example of how it was possible to remain morally pure while aggressively pursuing change.

Larry’s choice could not have been more different from Gandhi: the Corsican-born military leader Napoleon Bonaparte. “Napoleon overthrew kings and tyrants throughout Europe, created a system of free public schools, and wrote one set of laws that applied to everybody. Napoleon achieved liberal ends through conservative means,” Larry argued. " - The Billionaire and the Mechanic”
― Julian Guthrie, The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, The America's Cup