Top 35 Kenneth Lay Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Aggressive accounting does not mean illegal accounting.”

— Kenneth Lay

2. “Am I a fool? I don’t think I’m a fool. But I think I sure was fooled.”

— Kenneth Lay

3. “I’ve not only pursued the American dream, I’ve achieved it. I suppose we could say the last few years, I’ve also achieved the American nightmare.”

— Kenneth Lay

4. “I don’t think I’m a criminal, number one.”

— Kenneth Lay

5. “Investors don’t like uncertainty.”

— Kenneth Lay

6. “I don’t fear jail because I know I’m not guilty. I know I did nothing wrong. I did nothing criminal and I also believe my God will get me through this.”

— Kenneth Lay

7. “They can’t do without electricity. They can do with less electricity.”

— Kenneth Lay

8. “You’d rather have a surplus versus a shortage in your position.”

— Kenneth Lay

9. “When there’s uncertainty they always think there’s another shoe to fall. There is no other shoe to fall.”

— Kenneth Lay

10. “If there is anything material and we’re not reporting it, we’ll be breaking the law. We don’t break the law.”

— Kenneth Lay

11. “But I can’t take responsibility for criminal conduct of somebody inside the company.”

— Kenneth Lay

12. “The last thing I would have ever expected to happen to me in my life would be that, in fact, I would be accused of doing something wrong and maybe even something criminal.”

— Kenneth Lay

13. “The collapse of Enron and the subsequent collapse of Arthur Andersen were tremendous tragedies. But as I stated at the time of my indictment on July 8, 2004, failure does not equate to a crime.”

— Kenneth Lay

14. “In the case of Enron, we balance our positions all the time.”

— Kenneth Lay

15. “Today, there are also buyers and sellers of all these energy commodities, just like there are buyers and sellers of food commodities and many other commodities.”

— Kenneth Lay

16. “I have faith in the market when we get the rules right.”

— Kenneth Lay

17. “The problems in California have been that it’s been very difficult to site and build new power plants.”

— Kenneth Lay

18. “Well, rates would go up whether you deregulate or not, and of course, the rates that are going up right now on the electricity side are still within the regulated framework.”

— Kenneth Lay

19. “I take responsibility for what happened at Enron, both good and bad. But I cannot take responsibility for criminal conduct that I was unaware of.”

— Kenneth Lay

20. “I’ve been a strong financial and political supporter of, first, President Bush Sr. when he was running for president, and even when he ran for president a time or two and failed.”

— Kenneth Lay

21. “We will cooperate fully with the SEC and look forward to the opportunity to put any concern about these transactions to rest.”

— Kenneth Lay

22. “We use competitive markets to arrange for delivery of our food supply.”

— Kenneth Lay

23. “Trillions of dollars every day are being exchanged around the world in all of the financial markets.”

— Kenneth Lay

24. “But indeed a market like California is not good for Enron.”

— Kenneth Lay

25. “Every market is in transition.”

— Kenneth Lay

26. “The transmission systems are still regulated.”

— Kenneth Lay

27. “There are no accounting issues, no trading issues, no reserve issues, no previously unknown problem issues.”

— Kenneth Lay

28. “But the most important thing is, Enron did not cause the California crisis.”

— Kenneth Lay

29. “But certainly I didn’t know he was doing anything that was criminal.”

— Kenneth Lay

30. “We see ourselves as first helping to open up markets to competition.”

— Kenneth Lay

31. “I have to take responsibility for anything that happened within its businesses.”

— Kenneth Lay

32. “It’s been very interesting. We’ve seen a lot of interesting testimony. We’ve seen a lot of interesting people, a lot of allegations, a lot of lies, a lot of misinformation and some truth.”

— Kenneth Lay

33. “I mean, our primary businesses in wholesale pipelines, utilities, retail, were all doing extremely well.”

— Kenneth Lay

34. “Jeff knew full well what he was walking away from. Again, he needed to deal with this right away.”

— Kenneth Lay

35. “There are absolutely no problems that had anything to do with Jeff’s departure.”

— Kenneth Lay