My top 10 highlights from the book:

1. Optimism is the personal quality that nurtures luck.

2. No guts, no blue chips, has always been a wildcatter's expression of faith.

3. What they needed was a company that had a single man running it; no committees, no group decisions, no hierarchy of managers, no professional deal-killers or pessimists, no long waits for approval while the deal went down the drain, no stockholders eager to put in their two cents or Monday-morning quarterback a risky decision that failed

4. His unquestioning confidence in the worthiness of his enterprise made him seem impervious to doubts.

5. He possessed the directness and the utter simplicity of the old and the truly great.

6. He kept his faith in the absolute value of building, of progress, of getting things done.

7. "We're oilmen" meant that anything which extended beyond the realm of oil was not a proper Moncrief concern.

8. Anybody who's got an idea of his own has to be a little bit crazy. Being crazy is something big companies just don't understand.

9. I'd rather be lucky than smart, because a lot of smart guys go hungry.

10. In business, there's no what if. There's only what happened.

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