Top 30 Peter Guber Quotes

The portal into people’s hearts is being interested in them.

Every journey that is successful has culs-de-sac and speed bumps. I carry a wisdom gene through my life through the good, the bad, and the ugly.

A gun can be dangerous. But a gun can protect you, you can hunt for food with it – you know, the tool itself is a tool. The intention of the party using the tool is a part of the process, right? You know: the knife cuts the steak, stabs the person, saves somebody from danger, cuts somebody out of a car.

Stories aren’t the icing on the cake; they are the cake!

The arts tend to be more liberal. There tends to be more social relevance in the arts.

So when you tell a joke, you want to make someone laugh, or if you tell a story about someone who had a heart attack, it may be because you want the listener to exercise. Stories are tools to create social cohesion and to get humans to strategize together.

Nothing replaces being in the same room, face-to-face, breathing the same air and reading and feeling each other’s micro-expressions.

Tribalism isn’t a bad thing. If you’re a Facebook user, or Twitter user or Foursquare user or LinkedIn user, those are all tribes… and they may even have sub-tribes. It’s not pejorative, it’s declarative.

Truth is a point of view, but authenticity can’t be faked.

The idea is, we’re still a society where we recognize and see and even sometimes seek members of our own tribe, whatever that tribe is. It could be ethnic, religious, geographic, political.

Use state-of-the-heart technology online and offline to turn listeners into viral advocates and customers into raving fans.

When you want to move somebody, you have to say to yourself: ‘I’m in the emotional transportation business. I gotta move them, emotionally.’

Think about all the great leaders. Think about Obama. Think about Clinton. Think about Nelson Mandela. Think about all the people that we know who are very successful in business, in politics and religion. What are they? They tell purposeful stories. They move people to action by aiming at the heart.

Well, the idea is that failure is an inevitable partner on the road to success and, if you’re not willing to confront failure, you can never find out how good you are.

Social cohesion was built into language long before Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter – we’re tribal by nature. Tribes today aren’t the same as tribes thousand of years ago: It isn’t just religious tribes or ethnic tribes now: It’s sports fans, it’s communities, it’s geography.

When somebody is enthusiastic about a job opportunity – but gives off the feeling that this is not the only one they have on the table – they become more seductive in the employer’s eyes. You become more desirable because it shows that you’re making a conscious and thoughtful decision for the right reasons.

The seminal elements of what makes a story great – challenge, struggle, resolution – are the same whether we’re talking about story content for a movie such as ‘Rain Man,’ or telling a purposeful story to forge new business relationships or conclude a fruitful transaction, such as acquiring an NBA franchise.

Most young people haven’t used their storytelling skills since they were 8 or 9 or 10 and wanted to persuade Mom and Dad to take them to the ball game.

Language is a more recent technology. Your body language, your eyes, your energy will come through to your audience before you even start speaking.

I was born curious.

I’ve worked with Jack Warner and Jimmy Stewart – and Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Johnny Depp twice. I’ve had dinners with Fred Astaire and Cary Grant.

‘Tell to Win’ reveals the key elements that tellers of purposeful stories utilize to engage their listeners and turn them into viral advocates of the tellers’ goals.

At Casablanca we did ‘Midnight Express,’ ‘Flashdance,’ and ‘The Deep.’ My willingness for risk has always been my strength.

People love to be swept off their feet, to go into an environment where they’ve never been, to experience things they only dream about. And filmmaking offers that potential.

Without social cohesion, the human race wouldn’t be here: We’re not formidable enough to survive without the tactics, rules and strategies that allow people to work together.

In today’s roller-coaster economy, hyper-competitive, fear-based, flat and global world, convincing anyone to do anything at any time requires getting their attention, creating their intention and turning it to action.

Are you motivated? Are you coherent? Is your intention aligned? Are your feet, tongue, heart and wallet congruent? That intention shines through.

Telling purposeful stories is interactive. It’s not a monolog. Ultimately, purposeful tellers must surrender control of their stories, creating a gap for the listener(s) to willingly cross in order to take ownership. Only when the listener(s) own the tellers’ story and make it theirs, will they virally market it.

I never look in the rearview mirror.

The minute you start the process of deciding to make a film and you’re communicating that vision to anyone, you’re in the process of selling. If you don’t understand that, you’re not in show business. You’re just not.