#126: Larry Ellison (The Billionaire and the Mechanic)

**David Senra** (0:01)
I'm talking about greatness, about taking a lever to the world and moving it, Larry said, walking the grounds of his new woodside property with his best friend Steve Jobs. I'm not talking about moral perfection. I'm talking about people who changed the world the most during their lifetime.
Jobs, who had returned to Apple three years earlier, enjoyed the conversational volleying and placed Leonardo da Vinci and Gandhi as his top choices, with Gandhi in the lead. Leonardo, a great artist and inventor, lived in violent times and was a designer of tanks, battlements, ramparts, and an assortment of other military tools and castle fortifications. Jobs cited Gandhi's doctrine of nonviolent revolution as an example of how it was possible to remain morally pure while aggressively pursuing change.
Larry's choice for history's greatest person could not have been more different than Gandhi. The military leader, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon overthrew kings and tyrants throughout Europe, created a system of free public schools, and wrote one set of laws that applied to everybody. Napoleon invented modern public education, public art museums, and the modern legal system, and ended state-sponsored religious discrimination. And as if that weren't enough, he emptied the ghettos and gave the Jews equality in the eyes of the law, Larry said.
Steve had heard it all before and would never be convinced. The Napoleonic Wars are named after Napoleon. It's not a good thing to have lots of wars named after you, Steve countered, taking long pauses between his sentences, as was his way. In contrast, Gandhi's methods were moral, and his achievements were material. He led India to independence.
Napoleon engaged in a war to overthrow kings and tyrants. He had no choice. They couldn't be talked off their thrones, Larry said. Yes, India got its independence, and along with it, a genocidal civil war between Hindus and Muslims. Countless people were slaughtered on both sides.
Jobs noted that Gandhi had gone on a hunger strike to stop it. Yes, and for his selfless efforts, Gandhi was shot and martyred just like Lincoln, Larry said.
America's greatest president engaged in a war where over 600,000 people lost their lives. He ignored the Constitution and suspended habeas corpus, and he instilled a draft to fill the ranks of the Union Army. After the Battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln had to send troops to New York City to put down draft riots.
Even the sainted Lincoln was willing to resort to violence to purge the nation of slavery and preserve the Union. He couldn't talk the South out of succession or slavery. The saying, violence never solved anything, is nonsense. They had had this Who is the Greatest talk before, with Steve offering up Alexander Gustav Eiffel, who built the tower, Arthur Rimbaud, the 19th century French poet, and Bob Dylan, whom Steve said he would trade all of his technology to have an afternoon with.
They had also debated the role of founders of great religions, including Christ and Mohammed.
Steve liked to say the Beatles were his management model. Four guys who kept each other in check and produced something great.
Larry liked Galileo and Winston Churchill.
Winston Churchill saved Western civilization, Larry said, knowing that his friend didn't approve of Churchill's methods. Churchill prevented Hitler from invading England. The English people were not enslaved like so many others. Sure, he did it by shooting down lots of German airplanes and sinking the German fleet. Not every problem can be solved by talking.
Larry's favorite history book was Will and Ariel Durant's The Age of Napoleon, which he had read several times.
Like his buddy Steve and like Larry himself, Napoleon was an outsider who was told he would never amount to anything. When he was 10, he was sent from Corsica to military school in France.
His teacher's report said he spoke French with a horrible, thick Italian accent and noted that although the other kids didn't like him, he had an exceptionally high opinion of himself.
He was a small town Italian kid and nothing like the sophisticated Parisians he went to school with, Larry said. In other words, he was a man with something to prove. An obsessive compulsive who, while his marshals feasted and drank the night before battles, would work through the night.
Larry marveled to Steve. He'd spread the maps of all the area all over the floor of his tent. And then he spent all night planning and dictating detailed orders to each one of his commanders. He'd have roast chicken for dinner because he didn't want to have to stop working to eat.
What I'm interested in, Larry continued, is how can history's greatest general also be history's ablest administrator, the creator of the laws, the courts, the schools, the museums, all the institutions that shaped France then and now?