Quotes from Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

“Everyone in the room knew about leveraged buyouts, often called LBOs. In an LBO, a small group of senior executives, usually working with a Wall Street partner, proposes to buy its company from public shareholders, using massive amounts of borrowed money. Critics of this procedure called it stealing the company from its owners and fretted that the growing mountain of corporate debt was hindering America’s ability to compete abroad. Everyone knew LBOs meant deep cuts in research and every other imaginable budget, all sacrificed to pay off debt. Proponents insisted that companies forced to meet steep debt payments grew lean and mean. On one thing they all agreed: The executives who launched LBOs got filthy rich.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

“It is important to remember that, as Ken Auletta wrote in his definitive Greed and Glory on Wall Street, “no reporter can with 100 percent accuracy re-create events that occurred some time before. Memories play tricks on participants, the more so when the outcome has become clear. A reporter tries to guard against inaccuracies by checking with a variety of sources, but it is useful for a reader—and an author—to be humbled by this journalistic limitation.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

“He who’s not busy being born is busy dying.” Tony”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

“Planning, gentlemen, is ‘What are you going to do next year that’s different from what you did this year?’” he told them. “All I want is five items.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

“Recognize that ultimate success comes from opportunistic, bold moves which, by definition, cannot be planned.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

“Through all the machismo, through all the greed, through all the discussion of shareholder values, it all came down to this: John Gutfreund and Tom Strauss were prepared to scrap the largest takeover of all time because their firm’s name would go on the right side, not the left side, of a tombstone advertisement buried among the stock tables at the back of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

“turn over the reins to the board of directors.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

“The minute you establish an organization, it starts to decay.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

“changes in the story were the result of normal editing.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

About the author

Popular quotes

“The cell phone in my pocket went off. Shit! Damn it! Why do I carry these infernal gadgets? Why does anybody in their right mind need to constantly be on call?”
― James Patterson, quote from Violets Are Blue

“Adam había sacado la conclusión que, de todas las industrias del país, la reparación de vespas era la que representaba una mayor sobredemanda respecto a la oferta. En teoría, a quien se dispusiese a satisfacer esa demanda le esperaba una fortuna; pero en el fondo de su corazón Adam dudaba de que las vespas fuesen reparables, en el sentido normal del término; eran las mariposas de la carretera, organismos frágiles que tardaban mucho en ser fabricados y muy poco en morir.”
― David Lodge, quote from The British Museum Is Falling Down

“Relationship is thus always slavery of a kind, which leaves a residue of guilt.”
― Ernest Becker, quote from The Denial of Death

“We are not necessarily doubting,” said C. S. Lewis, “that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” He”
― Jan Karon, quote from A Light in the Window

“We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity.”
― Upamanyu Chatterjee, quote from English, August: An Indian Story

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.