George Kaiser Quotes

I prefer doing things rather than sitting around talking about doing things.

– George Kaiser

America’s ‘social contract’ is equal opportunity… yet we have failed in achieving that seminal goal.

– George Kaiser

In the charitable world as in the business world, opportunities should drive budgets, not the other way around.

– George Kaiser

I suppose I arrived at my charitable commitment largely through guilt. I recognized early on that my good fortune was not due to superior personal character or initiative so much as it was to dumb luck.

– George Kaiser

During the desperate depression of the 1980s, there were no oil and gas companies without net operating losses.

– George Kaiser

If you are born into poverty, the chances are good that your children will be born into poverty. Find a way to give poor kids the same cognitive stimulus that rich kids receive, and they should end up with the same tools for success.

– George Kaiser

Truly, learning appears to be a reverse geometric progression with experiences at one hour, one day, one month or one year dramatically more influential and formative than later experiences. As has often been quoted, 85% of brain development takes place by age 3, and yet we spend only 4% of our educational dollars by that point.

– George Kaiser

Naming rights are a seductive philanthropic inducement, yet more anonymous operational support may better advance the charitable purpose.

– George Kaiser

If you are doing what everyone else is doing, there is probably not an opportunity there.

– George Kaiser

Rich, smart parents tend to have rich, smart kids – not because it’s genetic but because they can create a home environment and sensory stimulation that lower-income kids often don’t get.

– George Kaiser

Those who have won the ovarian lottery by being born in an advanced society to loving parents have a special obligation to help restore the American Dream.

– George Kaiser

Maybe the perceived fact that smart, rich parents tended to have smart, rich kids was largely due to the fact that they also tended to have stay-at-home moms or nannies who read to their kids, held them, put mobiles over their cribs, playing those annoying ditties, and sent them off for SAT training at six months.

– George Kaiser