Top 100 Ted Turner Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “If I had to predict, the way things are going, I’d say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct or nearly extinct within 50 years. Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me.”

— Ted Turner

52. “Every man sees a little of himself in Rhett Butler.”

— Ted Turner

53. “All my life people have said that I wasn’t going to make it.”

— Ted Turner

54. “At Time Warner, I had ten percent of the stock after the merger. But when we merged with AOL, I was diluted down to three percent.”

— Ted Turner

55. “Over a three year period, I gave away half of what I had. To be honest, my hands shook as I signed it away. I knew I was taking myself out of the race to be the richest man in the world.”

— Ted Turner

56. “Where’s the upside in opening your mouth?”

— Ted Turner

57. “I was gonna go broke if I didn’t get things turned around real fast.”

— Ted Turner

58. “I had more energy at 50. On the other hand, at 75, I’ve probably got a little more wisdom and good judgment than I had at 50 because I’ve got more experience. But I haven’t really changed. I’m still driven by the same philosophy.”

— Ted Turner

59. “I think Captain Cousteau might be the father of the environmental movement.”

— Ted Turner

60. “If the Russian nuclear arsenal was fired at the United States and other targets, and we fired back at them with thousands of nuclear weapons, it would be the end of life on earth.”

— Ted Turner

61. “Exposure to defeat is a very important thing. Anyone who doesn’t look to get beaten is doing a disservice to himself.”

— Ted Turner

62. “To be happy in this world, first you need a cell phone and then you need an airplane. Then you’re truly wireless.”

— Ted Turner

63. “CNN anchor Gwen Scott claimed it is common knowledge that Turner sits in his office and smokes marijuana.”

— Ted Turner

64. “If I only had a little humility, I would be perfect.”

— Ted Turner

65. “I’m sure God, wherever he is, wants to see us get along with one another and love one another.”

— Ted Turner

66. “The sad thing about destroying the environment is that we’re going to take the rest of life with us. The bluebirds will be gone, and the elephants will be gone, and the tigers will be gone, and the pandas will be gone.”

— Ted Turner

67. “The whole idea of television news or any kind of news is to inform people about things they need to know about.”

— Ted Turner

68. “I love CNN. I love the Cartoon Network. I mean, I thought these things up.”

— Ted Turner

69. “The chance for mistakes is about equal to the number of crew squared.”

— Ted Turner

70. “I believe in pulling together to make the country better right rather than pulling, tearing it apart for partisan reasons. I think the country comes first.”

— Ted Turner

71. “Rupert Murdoch is the most dangerous man in the world.”

— Ted Turner

72. “Hell, we spent $200 Billion to get a scared guy who needed a shave out of a fox-hole! And he may even die of prostate cancer before we even get a chance to try him, dammit!”

— Ted Turner

73. “Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.”

— Ted Turner

74. “If there is a God, he is not doing a good job of protecting the earth. He’s kind of checked out.”

— Ted Turner

75. “The media is too concentrated, too few people own too much. There’s really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It’s not healthy.”

— Ted Turner

76. “If I sold all my liabilities, I wouldn’t own anything. My wife’s a liability, my kids are liabilities, and I haven’t sold them.”

— Ted Turner

77. “We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten – not ten, but thirty or forty years, and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.”

— Ted Turner

78. “Just because your ratings are bigger doesn’t mean you’re better.”

— Ted Turner

79. “The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that’s all they have. The Israelis they’ve got one of the most powerful military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved in terrorism.”

— Ted Turner

80. “Nuclear war would really set back cable.”

— Ted Turner

81. “The reason that the World Trade Center got hit is because there are a lot of people living in abject poverty out there who don’t have any hope for a better life.”

— Ted Turner

82. “When I was a publisher of CNN, I took responsibility for the actions of the network.”

— Ted Turner

83. “If the perpetrators of the World Trade Center plane crashes had a nuclear weapon, there’s no doubt in my mind but that they would’ve detonated it in New York.”

— Ted Turner

84. “When I was young and ocean-racing competitively, and working the rest of the time, I was going 24 hours. I was on the verge of collapsing. But you’ve got to slow down a bit.”

— Ted Turner

85. “If you can get yourself where you’re not afraid of dying, then you can move forward a lot faster.”

— Ted Turner

86. “War has been good to me from a financial standpoint but I don’t want to make money that way. I don’t want blood money.”

— Ted Turner

87. “The Iranians don’t intimidate! They’re like the Vietnamese and the Iraqis. You want to start a war with them? They’ll still be fighting in fifty years!”

— Ted Turner

88. “I wanted to better inform the world.”

— Ted Turner

89. “It’s been a long time since anybody caught me saying something stupid.”

— Ted Turner

90. “I believe in a reasonable amount of “right to bear arms”. But private citizens of the United States are not allowed to own nuclear weapons. I always wanted a nuclear weapon, if I could have gotten one. I’m every other kind of power, but I’m not a nuclear power.”

— Ted Turner

91. “The worst thing you can do if you want to start a fight is to use derogatory terminology.”

— Ted Turner

92. “Man should be judged by the deeds done to help his fellow man.”

— Ted Turner

93. “I’ve never run into a guy who could win at the top level in anything today and didn’t have the right attitude, didn’t give it everything he had, at least while he was doing it; wasn’t prepared and didn’t have the whole program worked out.”

— Ted Turner

94. “Every few seconds it changes – up an eighth, down an eighth – it’s like playing a slot machine. I lose $20 million, I gain $20 million.”

— Ted Turner

95. “I like snakes. I like hummingbirds. There’s nothing on earth I don’t like. Frogs. Salamanders. The bunnies, the giraffes, the hippopotamuses.”

— Ted Turner

96. “I’ve had the good fortune to have a much more diverse life than most people would, professional sports and television and news and movies.”

— Ted Turner

97. “There’s nothing wrong with being fired.”

— Ted Turner

98. “It was a struggle financing CNN, but I did it without ever asking the government for a nickel.”

— Ted Turner

99. “I’m 68 and a half years old; I grew up with newspapers; I love newspapers; I love the news business. I started CNN; I’m a journalist and proud of it.”

— Ted Turner

100. “The world and life have been mighty good to me. And I want to put something back.”

— Ted Turner