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. – Leonard Lauder
I’d rather be a big fish in a specialized pond than a little, little fish in a more generalized big pond. – Leonard Lauder
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. – Leonard Lauder
Every morning, I eat one fat-free yogurt with a sliced peach when peaches are in season, and one thin slice of whole-wheat bread. The same thing. I don’t want to get fat. And I want to keep my fitness. – Leonard Lauder
A visionary is someone who can see the future, or thinks he sees the future. In my case, I use it and it comes out right. That doesn’t come from daydreams or dreams, but it comes from knowing the market and knowing the world and knowing people really well and knowing where they’re going to be tomorrow. – Leonard Lauder
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. – Leonard Lauder
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. – Leonard Lauder
When you live in the shadow of a big tree, you have to run twice as fast to get into the sunlight. – Leonard Lauder
No one stopped buying I.B.M. because Tom Watson wasn’t there, but they stopped buying Elizabeth Arden because she wasn’t there. – Leonard Lauder
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. – Leonard Lauder
