Top 71 Quotes & Sayings by John Caudwell

I will stay living in Staffordshire. Other people would be moving offshore. I am reasonably happy to help support the British economy. I have done very well out of Britain.

I might have made more money if I had outsourced to India, and I knew I'd find it easier to hire senior managers in London. But I wanted to be in Stoke. What could be more satisfying than creating work for 3,000 people in my home town?

The only really important thing, at the end of the day, is your health. If you haven't got that, then all the money in the world isn't going to bring you happiness.

Before I really even understood what the term meant, I wanted to be wealthy. I wanted to be able to drive the beautiful old Rolls-Royces my father admired when I was a child.

I do want to keep the Wedgewood Collection in place, intact, and open to the public. Selling it off would be a real tragedy.

There are lots of brownfield sites in Stoke, but they are not suitable for building executive homes. It needs to be surrounded by fields. It needs to be on greenbelt land. That's what executives want.

I just wasn't academic. I wanted to be in the real world.

I would be the first to say that while a lack of money can cause misery, money doesn't buy you happiness.

People are much more important than superficial environments.

The power of fear of failure, with will to win, is an incredible force. I don't think we should be worried about having a fear of failure; I think it's quite natural. If you surveyed any top businessman or any top athlete, I bet if they were truthful, they would all say they've got a fear of losing and a fear of failure.

I always felt, right from a youngster, that it was my destiny to be a success. It sounds a little bit egotistical, but I felt I had a calling to do something.

My favourite thing is to come down to London from my home in Staffordshire in the helicopter and then get my bike out of the back and cycle into London. It's wonderful.

Really good customer service will deliver sales. You are training salesmen to give the best possible advice and then to achieve the sale. People actually like you to ask for a sale because it shows you value their business.

I saw that e-mail was insidiously invading Phones 4u, so I banned it immediately.

I do like a healthy dose of adrenalin, but my character is more rounded. I am not timid; I like excitement.

Sometimes your worst competitors are the ones which are dying because they do stupid things.

I always switch off from the business when I go across the threshold. Home is home, and I try to keep it that way.

At the end of the day, if you've got the great idea, and someone judges you've got the managerial capability, you'll probably get the backing for it.

I'm a capitalist. I'm not going to feel sympathetic to people leading a life they don't have to lead who, with effort, could maybe break out of it.

I was bullied at school for my red hair; today I still come out fighting hard. I give as good as I get. In business, it's about finding solutions, not being rolled over.

Some of the things I did in my early career were massive learning curves because I had no one to guide me. You learn very quickly because it costs you torment and trouble.

I considered several names, but Titania, a character from Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream', was best able to portray the image I wanted for what is a fantastically elegant and sexy yacht.

If you throw money around like confetti, it just becomes shallow and meaningless.

When the country's indebtedness is so colossal and where the budget deficit is so huge, there is a moral obligation on people to pay their fair and reasonable dues.

When I came into the mobile phone business, I was really the upstart who pretty much took the business, not quite by storm, but really made an impact on it quite early on. But it was from a position, really, of feeling that I was a last mover.

I was always interested in ladies' fashion.

When my back's to the wall, I want to fight.

In the early days, I had everything to prove. A very working class lad with a burning ambition. A very crude way of measuring success is how much you are worth.

My father was unwell when I was 11, had a stroke at 14 and died when I was 18. My mother going to work at seven in the morning and coming back to look after him and me and my brother left its mark on me.

OK, I've made a preposterous amount of money. But I was born with the attributes needed to do it.

My objective is to leave my family adequately catered for, but I want my children to make their own way. I want them to have pride in their own achievements.

I didn't want my epitaph to read 'Here lies John Caudwell, billionaire.' I knew that wasn't enough. I've had a charitable instinct all my life, but working gave me no time for it.

I don't like paying too much for anything or wasting it. I think that I'm more of a balanced individual rather than a dichotomy.

I'm in the lucky position that I can help a huge amount of people. It's a great privilege and freedom to have.

Mine was quite a working-class childhood with very little money, and my father was out of work a couple of times, which had quite a traumatic effect.

I decided to leave most of my wealth to my charitable foundation, which is not to be confused with my charity. My charity helps children directly. The charitable foundation will receive most of my legacy when I die.

I believe in workers' rights when people are doing a good job.

I will give away at least half my wealth during my lifetime and after my death. In the meantime, I'll continue to grow my wealth as much as possible so that the amount I bequeath to charities and worthy causes can be as substantial as possible.

I couldn't even contemplate anyone even making a film about my life!

My philosophy is very much to encourage my children to forge their own success and happiness, even though that will undoubtedly involve much more modest levels of wealth creation.

I was only 21 when I bought a five-bedroom detached house in Stoke-on-Trent that was way outside of my financial status in life. I did it by borrowing money from my family and the bank, taking out a huge mortgage.

Taxes aren't the way to go. They'd strangle the economy; you wouldn't create the wealth. And nothing squanders money as well as a government. What we need is to encourage rich people to give.

My main commitment is to Caudwell Children. I put more than £1m a year into the charity, besides a lot of time and effort.

My second business would have succeeded but for competitors' jealousy. I was selling motorbike gear cheap, but the people I was undercutting complained to the manufacturer and cut off my supply. It showed me how corrupt business can be. When I sold phones, the same thing happened, but this time I was ready.

Business is about being the best that you can be, and there are always glowing examples of people that we can all learn from.

Business gives you a massive high. Doing a great deal, coming up with an inspirational solution... It's very addictive. But it doesn't last long. In isolation, it's a bit sterile. It doesn't reward the soul.

I'm a wealth creator. I'm not interested in saving in the least. While I do spend a lot, I don't spend money like other billionaires. I'm probably quite unusual, albeit I do have some of the significant trappings. But I always try to make my assets work for a living.

In any business opportunity, you'd be looking, probably, primarily at the risk and return. Some business can be very risky with a low return; what you want is the lowest risk with the biggest return.

I suppose I have very undesirable traits. I am very critical, which is very undesirable. But it is good from a business point of view.

I'm known for value for money. I was brought up to be frugal, and it's definitely a factor in my success. I was born in the Fifties, which was a frugal era, and my family had to be very careful with money out of necessity.

People can come to me, and no matter how expert they are, I can virtually always see a way of doing something better.

Those of us who have yet to find philanthropy may find there is a far greater reward from it than from wealth creation.

As the years passed, and I was nine, 10, 11 years old, it became obvious I was going to start up a business of some sort.

Knowing that my ancestry had all been quite wealthy and owned their own businesses probably left me with the ambition to replicate what they'd done.

E-mails are the cancer of modern business.

I have a helicopter that I use for U.K. business trips, and I fly myself. I have a yacht in Antibes in the south of France, which is a sort of indulgence, as we only use it for about four weeks a year. The rest of the time, it is chartered out to people as a business.

I make no apology for wanting to make a profit - the more I make, the bigger percentage will go to charity. So most of the work I do now is motivated by that.

I do not put my tastes as incredibly expensive, but they are incredibly expensive for an average man.

Journalists like to say I started off sweeping the pottery floors. But it was just a short-lived part time job doing that after I left school.

It's important to show children love, affection and balance and invest time in their moral upbringing.