Who Knew Quotes

“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’m much too much of a micromanager to be anything but frustrated hovering a superficial forty thousand feet above the day-to-day issues.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“Good solid one-off ideas are a whole lot better than consolidating stuff just to be a bigger and more unwieldy enterprise.”
― 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 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

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

“I have a very poor memory for the details of being mistreated. I generally forget them; literally, I can’t remember. I think it’s because I have no appetite for vengeance.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“Having specific goals on that path forward are often detriments. Better to just take opportunities whenever they come and not overplot.”
― 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

“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

“To be truly independent, beholden to no one but yourself, unprotected by the mothering of a corporation—for a lifelong employee that’s a daunting proposition.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“I thought then and think now that a good employee does believe and act as if the company belongs to them. But of course that’s an illusion,”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

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

“Drop them in the deep end and see who struggles and who survives. Keep promoting those who survive.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“I like to give people “too much” responsibility because I took on “too much” when I was at ABC in my early twenties. I liked my process of drowning until I could figure out where the current was moving.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“one dumb step forward, two back, course-correcting as I went, bouncing off one wall then the other, finding my way. Deeper examination would have doomed the network from ever starting.”
― 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

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

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

“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

“Algorithmic life can’t be enjoyably led by anyone other than pure technocrats, and it and its disciples are driving the lone creator with just a good, pure, and instinctive idea to extinction.”
― Barry Diller, Who Knew

“I’ve never cared much about competition. I’m not envious or upset by others’ success, and I don’t think their success diminishes me. No one has to lose for me to be successful.”
― 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

“The Winds of War by Herman Wouk,”
― 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