The Big Rich Quotes

“Murchison’s”
― Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes

“If you’re gonna owe money, owe more than you can pay, then the people can’t afford to foreclose.”
― Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes

“It was this line of thinking that led Murchison to become an outlaw, a defiant hot oiler. From 1932 until 1934, in fact, he may have been the biggest hot oiler in all of East Texas, and he didn’t especially care who knew.”
― Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes

“The Texas Legislature got involved, arguing proration bills all through the summer. Finally, on August 5, a day after the governor of Oklahoma declared martial law and sent in troops to shut down and begin regulating his state’s oil fields, Hunt and thirty-six other large East Texas operators sent a telegram to Governor Sterling urging him to follow suit. Sterling gave in. On August 16, declaring East Texas oilmen to be in open “rebellion” against the state, he declared martial law and sent in the National Guard to shut down the oil field.”
― Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes

“The furious pace of drilling was driven by what was called the “rule of capture,” a legal term roughly translated as finders keepers. Oil beneath the earth doesn’t conform to the niceties of lease boundaries, and a well drilled beside a competitor’s lease might well suck up oil from both. No matter. What you got, you kept. Those who tarried might end up with nothing. Thus, every well was a race.”
― Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes

“You are broke,” the banker said, as Hunt recalled the conversation, “and your statement shows you are broke.” “I’ve got the Joiner leases,” Hunt replied. “It’s a proven field. There’s oil in the ground, and that’s a bankable asset.” Not in Louisiana it wasn’t. Dallas, however, was another story. The city’s two largest banks, First National and Republic National, were among the first in the United States to see the wisdom of lending against proven reserves; it was their vision that would transform Dallas into the mecca of Texas oil banking and fuel the city’s future growth.”
― Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes

“News of the historic deal broke on the front pages of the Dallas papers that Sunday. The men of Texas Oil were left speechless. It was, by wide acclaim, the most astounding business deal the state had ever seen; as the enormity of the East Texas field became apparent in coming months, it would be hailed as the deal of the century. An obscure interloper, a closet bigamist, a man just nine years removed from life as a professional gambler, and from Arkansas of all places, had seized the heart of the greatest oil field in history, a field that in the next fifty years would produce four billion barrels of oil. H. L. Hunt had snatched East Texas from beneath the noses of the slumbering majors, and most incredible of all, he hadn’t used a cent of his own money.”
― Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes

“By 1932 his debt had grown to more than four million dollars, far more than his net worth. “Aren’t you concerned about owing all this money you can’t pay?” Ernest Closuit asked him. “No,” Murchison said with a smile. “If you’re gonna owe money, owe more than you can pay, then the people can’t afford to foreclose.”
― Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes

“The pivot on which everything turned, at least initially, was James Guffey, who struck “the deal of the century” when he sold much of Spindletop’s oil to a company he had never heard of—and whose executives needed a map to locate Beaumont—Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s largest oil producer; the deal made Shell an international colossus. Guffey was backed by and later sold out to the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, who roared into the Gulf Coast fields with a new company it named, appropriately, Gulf Oil, which became one of America’s greatest oil companies. The Pew family of Philadelphia, founders of Sun Oil, swept into Spindletop in a blizzard of activity, laying pipelines, buying storage facilities and so much oil it had to build a new refinery at Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania. Another of the companies weaned at Spindletop was the Texas Company, later known as Texaco.”
― Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes

“Spindletop not only created the modern American oil industry, it changed the way the world used oil. Its dirty little secret was that the oil found around Beaumont was of such poor quality it could not be refined into kerosene. But it made fine fuel oil—and that’s what changed everything. So much black crude flowed from Beaumont that oil prices dropped to three cents a barrel—a cup of water cost five cents—making it economical for railroads and steamship companies to convert from coal to oil.”
― Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes