1. I’m not just the greatest, I’m the double greatest.

Muhammad Ali (b.1942) U.S. boxer. Press conference (1963)

2. Anything you can do I can do better, I can do anything better than you.

Irving Berlin (1888-1989) U.S. composer and songwriter. “Anything You Can Do,” Annie Get Your Gun (1946)

3. I’m a single, straight billionaire in Manhatten. What do you think? It’s a wet dream.

Michael Bloomberg (b.1942) U.S> entrepreneur, business executive, and Mayor of New York. “Terminal Velocity,” Wired (David S. Bennahum; February 1999)

4. Thank you for making me nouveau riche.

Jerry Della Femina (b.1936) U.S. advertising executive. Engraving on a silver box presented to attorney Mort Janklow after the successful sale of Della Femina’s advertising agency. New York magazine (1987)

5. If you wish in this world to advance

Your merits you’re bound to enhance;

You must stir it and stump it,

And blow your own trumpet,

Or trust me, you haven’t a chance.

W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) British liberettist and playwright. Ruddigore (1887), Act 1

6. I have helped to change society in a way that is beyond presidents and is going to make the world a better and happier place.

Hugh Hefner (b.1926) U.S. entrepreneur and publisher, Mail and Femail (December 18, 1989)

7. I gotta tell ya, with our $2.4 billion in profits last year, they gave me a great big bonus. Really, it’s almost obscene.

Lee Iacocca (b.1924) U.S. president of Ford Motor Company, chairman and C.E>O. of Chrysler Corporation. Said in a speech to market analysts in Detroit. Quoted in Time (April 1, 1985)

8. Boast not of what thou wouldn’t have done, but do

Then what thou would’nt.

John Milton 91608-74) English poet. Samson Agonistes (1671)

9. If I needed a banker, I would go to me. No one really does what I do.

Nancy Peretsman (b.1955) U.S. investment banker. Answering the question: “Nancy, what makes you so special?” “Smarter than Herbert’s Dog,” Forbes Global (Dyan Machan; 1999)

10. Deep down, we’re all Texans at heart. We love big and bigger, and positively adore biggest.

Tom Peters (b.1942) U.S. management consultant and author. Liberation Management (1992)

11. Beware the manager who proclaims to the world he is a long-termer, beginning today.

Gifford Pinchot (b.1942) U.S. author and software C.E.O. Harvard Business Review (May-June 1986)

12. I don’t meet competition. I crush it.

Charles Revson (1906-75) U.S. entrepreneur, business executive, and founder of Revlon, Inc. Time (June 16, 1958)

13. When I describe Semco to other business people, they laugh. “What do you do?” they ask, “make beads?” And I say no, among other things we make rocket-fuel-propellant mixers for satellites.

Ricardo Semler (b.1959) Brazilian business executive and president of Semco. “The Mavericks,” Fortune (June 1995)

14. If I only had a little humility, I’d be perfect.

Ted Turner (b.1938) U.S. founder of Turner Broadcasting Systems. New York Times (1980)

15.It is very vulgar to talk about one’s business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish writer and wit. Said by Algernon. The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Act 2.