When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working. That was my primary goal. Sure, I wanted to make a living. I certainly never expected to become rich, certainly not this rich. I mean, rich does not even describe this. This is surreal. And it has nothing to do with money. I mean, you buy clothes with money, and cars. But I really wanted to work with people I enjoyed working with, who I admired and liked.

What can a sales person say to somebody to get them to buy a product that they already use every day if they don't like it? Nothing.

Both my mother and I were determined that we weren't going to stay on welfare. We always worked toward doing better, toward having a better life. We never had any doubts that we would.

If the Internet turns out not to be the future of computing, we're toast. But if it is, we're golden.

Microsoft is already the most powerful company on earth but you ain't seen nothing yet.

I have run engineering since day one at Oracle, and I still run engineering. I hold meetings every week with the database team, the middle ware team, the applications team. I run engineering and I will do that until the board throws me out of there.

I have hobbies. I do all sorts of ridiculous things.