John Malone Quotes

“You start looking for what opportunities exist that you can take advantage of in what is essentially a very tight credit environment.”

“You've got to play both offense and defense.”

“Long-term valuations are going to be a function of long-term interest rates.”

“I used to say in the cable industry that if your interest rate was lower than your growth rate, your present value is infinite. That's why the cable industry created so many rich guys.”

“Inflation lets you raise your rates and devalue your liabilities.”

“What you really are afraid of is that you're competing against somebody who is rich and irrational.”

“There's an old saying that the government is your partner from birth, but they don't get to come to all the meetings.”

“I think private ownership is generally superior to public because you care about the land more and it doesn't get trashed.”

“Synergy is the driver. There are two levels of synergy: there are operating synergies, which, you know, you'd have to be stupid not to try to take advantage of, and then there are strategic synergies.”

“Even if you don't postulate high growth rates, you can generate high equity returns if you can leverage them up.”

“Good businesses with good life expectancies will find credit…”

“God help us if we think we can pick winners and losers when it comes to making movies.”

“Stocks are cheap; companies aren't.”

“God help us if we think we can pick winners and losers when it comes to making movies. Even the good guys don't know how to do that.”

“Now fifty years ago, I made a promise to myself that I never have broken: If we get out of this alive, I will never bet the whole farm on anything. No deal is ever worth doing that.”

“The only time I saw Bill Gates cry is when John told him, no, we are not going to let you control the cable industry. Bill had laid so much pipe and tried so hard to pull this off, and when you finally said 'it's not gonna happen,' he burst out into tears.”

“Money is not necessarily a motivator for me but bringing order to chaos is. I see myself as an engineer. And engineers solve problems. And they are pragmatic about it. They don't have a particular methodology the way a scientist would. Whatever works.”

“I regarded myself as mismatched to the world to some degree, handicapped by an absence of social skills or the drive to socialize, and envious of the people who felt at ease in crowds and parties. Even the people I think I am close to sometimes see me as cold and aloof. I have come to realize later in life that, like other members of my family, I am a high-functioning autistic.”

“About the time that I exited U.S. cable, a number of things were going on. AT&T, the large corporate owner was now the largest operator in the business and didn't really understand club membership.”

“The distinction between library entertainment services and live — whether it's sports or news or other kinds of talk shows — is the question your viewers have to focus on. When it comes to live, which has always been the backbone of broadcast, big tech can buy Thursday Night Football for multiples of what the industry has been paying. We've created an open path for big tech to essentially decimate.”

“If you accept conventional wisdom, you are accepting, at best, average results. If you want superior results, you have to push boundaries. You've got to bang against the wall, challenge the common perception, and be willing to take risks as you're doing it.”

“This term, 'Cable Cowboy,' it implies sort of seat of the pants, entrepreneurialism, and all this stuff. But cowboys are also authentic, humble and modest and loyal, and that's the kind of cowboy this guy is.”