Top 100 Ted Turner Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life is a game. Money is how we keep score.”

— Ted Turner

Featured in: Startup Quotes, Quotes About Money

2. “You should set goals beyond your reach so you always have something to live for.”

— Ted Turner

Featured in: Startup Quotes, Goal Quotes, Encouragement Quotes, Good Morning Inspirational Quotes, Ambition Quotes

3. “Do something. Either lead, follow or get out of the way.”

— Ted Turner

4. “You can never quit. Winners never quit, and quitters never win.”

— Ted Turner

Featured in: Quotes About Strength, Failure Quotes, Cheer Quotes, Victory Quotes, Quitting Quotes

5. “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”

— Ted Turner

6. “Make a way, find a way or get out of the way.”

— Ted Turner

7. “Once you decide to do something, and you’re pretty sure you’re right, then you gotta go ahead and do it. Because if you piddle around, somebody else will beat you to it.”

— Ted Turner

8. “If you panic that’s a good way to lose. You have to stay in control.”

— Ted Turner

9. “To succeed you have to be innovative.”

— Ted Turner

10. “The happiest people are those who are contributing to society.”

— Ted Turner

11. “Music has a great power for bringing people together. With so many forces in this world acting to drive wedges between people, it’s important to preserve those things that help us experience our common humanity.”

— Ted Turner

12. “Be sure to set your goals so high that you can’t possibly accomplish them in one lifetime. That way you’ll always have something ahead of you. I made the mistake of setting my goals too low, and now I’m having a hard time coming up with new ones.”

— Ted Turner

13. “If you treat people with dignity, respect and friendliness, you can turn enemies into friends. An enemy is nothing but a friend in disguise.”

— Ted Turner

14. “The mind is just another muscle.”

— Ted Turner

15. “I’m just a socialist at heart.”

— Ted Turner

16. “The worst sin, the ultimate sin for me, in anything, is to be bored.”

— Ted Turner

17. “Christianity is a religion for losers.”

— Ted Turner

18. “The biggest thing I learned from losing? Winning’s better.”

— Ted Turner

19. “I’m no genius. I’m not at all; I just happen to look five or 10 years ahead and think things through...”

— Ted Turner

20. “There are too many people, that’s why we have global warming. We have global warming because too many people are using too much stuff.”

— Ted Turner

21. “What the Bible says is really true-it’s better to give than to receive.”

— Ted Turner

22. “I’m a human being, just like everybody else. I’m up some days and down others. Some days, I just refuse comment. If I’m feeling a little down, I won’t say anything. But if I’m really up, I’ll let it all hang out. I do have a slight propensity to put my foot in my mouth.”

— Ted Turner

23. “When our time’s up, it’s up. All the money in the world won’t buy you one more day.”

— Ted Turner

24. “I’m hard of hearing. I miss a lot. It’s really tough.”

— Ted Turner

25. “I was cable when cable wasn’t cool.”

— Ted Turner

26. “There is no greater legacy that we can leave our children and grandchildren than a peaceful and safer world.”

— Ted Turner

27. “I’m a very good thinker, but I sometimes grab the wrong word. I say something I didn’t think through adequately. I mean, I don’t type my speeches, then sit up there and read them off the teleprompter, you know. I wing it.”

— Ted Turner

28. “I see what keeps people young: work!”

— Ted Turner

29. “I’d rather be smart and poor than rich and dumb.”

— Ted Turner

30. “Sports is like a war without the killing.”

— Ted Turner

31. “Never set goals you can reach in your lifetime.”

— Ted Turner

32. “Struggling hard to achieve something is the most fun I get.”

— Ted Turner

33. “The United States has got some of the dumbest people in the world. I want you to know that we know that.”

— Ted Turner

34. “I don’t watch entertainment. I haven’t watched in years. I want to see serious news.”

— Ted Turner

35. “I’ve always tried to do the smartest and best thing.”

— Ted Turner

36. “Over-population is the ‘cause of drive-by shootings’ and other social ills, but the root of the problem is Christianity, which posits that people are more important than sea otters and elephants.”

— Ted Turner

37. “Every action or inaction has an impact-good or bad-upon our surroundings, and anything we do today will have an impact on the lives of our grandchildren.”

— Ted Turner

38. “I love this planet I want to see the environment preserved and I want to see the human race preserved. And I’d like to see everybody living decently in a more equitable, kind-hearted, thoughtful, generous world.”

— Ted Turner

39. “Men should be disqualified for public office. Women should run the planet. They’re better than us.”

— Ted Turner

40. “We must go through a natural revolution if we are to survive on earth. We need to change people’s perceptions. If there’s no environment, there’s no human race. We are in a state of global denial.”

— Ted Turner

41. “Basically we are chimpanzees with about two percent more intelligence and a little less hair.”

— Ted Turner

42. “I’m a millionaire, I guess, but I’m just a normal person and I like everybody, taxi drivers, whoever you are, to call me by my first name and talk to me on a man-to-man basis. I think the garbage collector is as important as the goddamned president.”

— Ted Turner

43. “I didn’t care what, how much adversity life threw at me. I intended to get to the top.”

— Ted Turner

44. “I thought, between sports and news and television and friendship, that you could end the Cold War and, by God, we did.”

— Ted Turner

45. “Life is like a B-movie. You don’t want to leave in the middle of it, but you don’t want to see it again.”

— Ted Turner

46. “I have both sleep apnea and atrial fibrillation, which are both debilitating conditions.”

— Ted Turner

47. “Even if we didn’t have greenhouse gases, were going to have to move away from fossil fuels, as we’re going to run out. They’re finite, whereas solar and wind are infinite.”

— Ted Turner

48. “I just love it when people say I can’t do it, there’s nothing that makes me feel better because all my life, people have said that I wasn’t going to make it.”

— Ted Turner

49. “Even when I started in 1970, I knew that television was having a negative effect on our society.”

— Ted Turner

50. “I fantasize about everything; being a fireman, an Indian chief, climbing mountains. Anything is possible.”

— Ted Turner