Leonard Lauder Quotations

The best advice I ever got came from my mother, Estee Lauder: She believed that if you had something good to say, you should put it in writing. But if you had something bad to say, you should tell the person to his or her face.

My mother always used to say when picking up a product, 'Would you give this to the Duchess of Windsor?' Well, that's lovely. But the Duchess of Windsor is dead.

You can't separate a house from a family. It's a living, breathing home.

I think a cosmetics company should be headed by a woman.

I'd rather be a big fish in a specialized pond than a little, little fish in a more generalized big pond.

To be a great leader, you firstly have to like people. If you don't like people, at the end of the day they will figure this out and you can't lead them too well.

I love rumors. It gives me something to think about and enjoy.

If tomorrow all of America were to become paternalistic, we would beat the Japanese every day of the week. I think that the concept of accusing someone of running a paternalistic company, that's not an accusation. One should compliment someone on that.

I love that works of art are printed so that anyone can buy them. The variety of what they put on little postcards astounds me.

I happen to like Precisionism. It talks to me because I collect Cubism.