Barry Diller Quotations

This is a world in which reasons are made up because reality is too painful.

The world is changing. Networks without a specific branding strategy will be killed. I envision a world of highly niched services and tightly run companies without room for all the overhead the established networks carry.

We want to be able to sell you anything, anywhere, any time you want it.

Sometimes it seems like there's more footnotes than text. This isn't something we're proud of, and over time we'd like to see our footnotes steadily shrink.

We're ready to compete. We're very serious about this. Search evolves. We have a product that I think is part of that.

We are all prepared to meet with the special committee and its legal and financial advisors at your earliest convenience,

I never thought I was a very good manager.

What I've learned over the years is that focus and singular purpose is the best approach for businesses.

I've always said AOL is great opportunity for somebody.

I like businesses in transition, first of all. If ever there were a business in transition, it is publishing.

I don't want to set the world up for surprises.

I absolutely believe the Internet is passing from its free days into a paid system. Inevitably, I promise you, it will be paid.

Hollywood is a community that's so inbred, it's a wonder the children have any teeth.

I still believe in synergy, but I call it natural law.

The idea of a company that's earning money, not losing money, that's not, let's say 'industrially endangered,' to have just cutbacks so they can earn another $12 million or $20 million or $40 million in a year where no one's counting is really a horrible act when you think about it on every level. First of all, it's certainly not necessary. It's doing it at the worst time. It's throwing people out to a larger, what is inevitably a larger unemployment heap for frankly no good reason.

My opinion, young people go to the Internet. To the Internet distribution system right now, you put it up there and it's accessed by the world.

No one can solve an issue where there is no economic model yet.

I'm never absolutely sure of anything, and I don't want to be. You're either right and you'll pull through, or you're not. We're never going to be right about everything, and we've certainly been wrong.

If you have too many epiphanies, you're on some kind of drug.

All forms of commerce are adversarial.

Well, the Internet is this miracle. It is an absolutely extraordinary idea that you can press a send button, and you are publishing to the world.

We need an unambiguous rule - a law - that nobody will step between the publisher and the consumer, full stop.

Ticketmaster does not set prices. Live Nation does not set ticket prices. Artists set ticket prices.

The only way anyone's going to succeed is to build the product.

The entertainment business hasn't had a new idea in years.

Since I was in my early twenties, at ABC, I was always only interested in things that were not already being done.

People have paid for content. They always have.

Now along comes the potential creative destruction brought by a different distribution methodology, the Internet.

It's not that you don't want to earn as much money as you can - it is your obligation, of course - but companies have obligations beyond that and they certainly have obligations beyond that at certain times, in the times in which they operate. And they also certainly ought to know that meeting and beating expectations is probably yesterday's game and it will be increasingly so, which would be by the way very healthy for companies. Running a company that meets and beats expectations, and that runs their company accordingly, are companies that I would question why anyone would invest in.

Put one dumb foot in front of the other and course-correct as you go.

Facebook's the real deal. Nobody can buy Facebook now. Everybody has taken an angle at it. But Facebook may be the place that organizes everybody's personal information. It's got a very good chance of being that.

The ability for consumers to receive broadcast over the air signal is their right.

We're in a world now where it's not enough to be smart. You have to be curious.

The American public tunes in every night hoping to see two people screwing. Obviously, we can't give them that but let's always keep it in mind.

I've not conducted my life in the service of smallness.

You really want to get a headache? Try to understand Internet advertising.

I can't imagine that there'll be any disruption of any kind, in any area, on any level or in any particular. It just simply seems to me actually impossible.

He recently told me he felt he had completed the (organization plan) and wanted at some soon point to move on to a company he could really run. This is entirely amicable with no precise end date and he and the other key members of the company know he has my complete and continued support in whatever he decides to do.

Results for the quarter and year are better than good; superb execution is the reason.

Terry's a thoughtful, intelligent man and he did not take his media imperialist roots to Sunnyvale. And that's what got him on the road to fluency, which he's mastered. That's some feat for an old-media dog, speaking as one who could be similarly described.

While we fully expect continued strength in our operations going forward, course correcting adaptations are vital to the execution of a focused agenda,

This places all the necessary ingredients for electronic information and commerce, from 'old' soup to 'new' nuts, into one centrally and aggressively managed enterprise. There is no excuse now for us not to be a dominant player as the world continues its transition towards interactive systems.