Top 50 T. Boone Pickens Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “When you are hunting elephants, don’t get distracted chasing rabbits.”

— T. Boone Pickens

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2. “A plan without action is not a plan. It’s a speech.”

— T. Boone Pickens

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3. “A Fool with a Plan is better off than a Genius without a Plan!”

— T. Boone Pickens

Featured in: Strategy Quotes, Preparation Quotes

4. “Work hard. Come early, stay late. That’s the way leadership has to approach it.”

— T. Boone Pickens

5. “Work eight hours and sleep eight hours, and make sure that they are not the same eight hours.”

— T. Boone Pickens

6. “I know what people say, that water’s a lot like air. Do you charge for air? Well, of course not. Well, you shouldn’t charge for water. Okay, watch what happens you won’t have any water.”

— T. Boone Pickens

7. “Predictability can lead to failure.”

— T. Boone Pickens

8. “The older I get, the more I see a straight path where I want to go. If you’re going to hunt elephants, don’t get off the trail for a rabbit.”

— T. Boone Pickens

9. “When you blow away the foam, you get down to the real stuff.”

— T. Boone Pickens

10. “On a scale from 1-10, my ambition is probably 11 or 12.”

— T. Boone Pickens

11. “If you don’t have a refinery operating, it’s hard to use oil that’s available.”

— T. Boone Pickens

12. “If you’re on the right side of the issue, just keep driving until you hear glass breaking. Don’t quit.”

— T. Boone Pickens

13. “Money is to be respected one of the worst things you can do is handle another person’s money without respect for how hard it was to earn.”

— T. Boone Pickens

14. “I don’t go cheap on anything, but I’m not a shopper. If I want something, I look at it, decide what it is, but it will usually be the best product. I’ve got a pair of loafers that I still wear that I got in 1957.”

— T. Boone Pickens

15. “You want to compete, and you want to compete at the highest level.”

— T. Boone Pickens

16. “Fundamentals make the market.”

— T. Boone Pickens

17. “The first billion is a helluva lot harder.”

— T. Boone Pickens

18. “It has become cheaper to look for oil on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange than in the ground.”

— T. Boone Pickens

19. “Natural gas is the best transportation fuel. It’s better than gasoline or diesel. It’s cleaner, it’s cheaper, and it’s domestic. Natural gas is 97 percent domestic fuel, North America.”

— T. Boone Pickens

20. “Keep things informal. Talking is the natural way to do business. Writing is great for keeping records and putting down details, but talk generates ideas. Great things come from out luncheon meetings which consist of a sandwich, a cup of soup, and a good idea or two. No martinis.”

— T. Boone Pickens

21. “A dollar is not worth as much as you think it is. Your honesty is worth much more.”

— T. Boone Pickens

22. “Try everything. Do everything. Nuclear. Biomass. Coal. Solar. You name it. I support them all.”

— T. Boone Pickens

23. “I’ve always believed that it’s important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure.”

— T. Boone Pickens

24. “I fracked over 3,000 wells in my life and never had a problem with an aquifer.”

— T. Boone Pickens

25. “If you can provide the funding and you get the leadership, you’ll have a competitive team.”

— T. Boone Pickens

26. “I don’t like stock buybacks. I think if a company has the money to buy their stock back, then they should take that and increase the dividends. Send it back to the stockholder. Let them invest their money again from the dividends.”

— T. Boone Pickens

27. “Chief executives, who themselves own few shares of their companies, have no more feeling for the average stockholder than they do for baboons in Africa.”

— T. Boone Pickens

28. “If somebody I don’t like gets in the crosshairs, I pull the trigger. But I don’t hunt for them.”

— T. Boone Pickens

29. “In the history of America, we’ve never had an energy plan. We don’t even realize the resources that we have available to us.”

— T. Boone Pickens

30. “Never Googled myself. I use a computer for market quotes and news, but I’ve never Googled myself. But I have visited their headquarters.”

— T. Boone Pickens

31. “I’m a Republican. I don’t want to go to heaven and have to face my family up there and tell them I voted for a Democrat.”

— T. Boone Pickens

32. “To me, emails are a little bit frustrating. I think that the telephone is much preferred because you get the sound of the voice and the interest and everything else you can’t see in an email.”

— T. Boone Pickens

33. “Far too many executives have become more concerned with the four P’s – pay, perks, power and prestige – rather than making profits for shareholders.”

— T. Boone Pickens

34. “I’ve got an opinion on everything.”

— T. Boone Pickens

35. “I was very fortunate in my gene mix. The gambling instincts I inherited from my father were matched by my mother’s gift for analysis.”

— T. Boone Pickens

36. “For decades, our dependence on OPEC oil has dictated our national security decisions and tied us up in the Middle East at an incredible price. We’ve spent more than $5 trillion and thousands of American soldiers have died securing Middle East oil.”

— T. Boone Pickens

37. “There is no free market for oil.”

— T. Boone Pickens

38. “I’ve been married over 50 years of my life.”

— T. Boone Pickens

39. “We’re going to have shortages and prices are going to go up. Gasoline is going to be extremely tight for us.”

— T. Boone Pickens

40. “Don’t get the idea that I’ve turned green. My business is making money, and I think this is going to make a lot of money.”

— T. Boone Pickens

41. “I never did anything dishonest.”

— T. Boone Pickens

42. “When you look at a commodities market you need hedgers and speculators. If you don’t have one, you don’t have a market. That’s how it works.”

— T. Boone Pickens

43. “I don’t need any more money.”

— T. Boone Pickens

44. “You give the money where you want it.”

— T. Boone Pickens

45. “I’m focused on energy only. And I know what I’m talking about. And I don’t want to be distracted on other things.”

— T. Boone Pickens

46. “I don’t believe in a price on carbon, because the government is going to control it and they’re going to fail.”

— T. Boone Pickens

47. “I think I have more patience now than I did in the past.”

— T. Boone Pickens

48. “I don’t go looking for somewhere to spend my money. You can step on a tube of toothpaste for a week, if you have to. I spend what I need to and give it away.”

— T. Boone Pickens

49. “I don’t think for a minute we went to Iraq for oil. It just so happened that it had oil. But I think we’ll come out of the Iraqi situation with a call on their oil at market price.”

— T. Boone Pickens

50. “I always saw myself as a large stockholder trying to make a difference. I wasn’t raiding anybody.”

— T. Boone Pickens