Safra A. Catz

My dream job was to work in an ice cream shop. Two weeks and five pounds later, I realized it wasn't for me. For many years, I had planned to be a corporate lawyer. As luck would have it, other than a summer internship, I didn't end up doing that either.

My greatest inspiration is my mother, the bravest person I ever knew. She overcame incredible odds, worked while raising two kids, and made it all look incredibly simple. Even in her final days succumbing to cancer, she fought like a champion.

Oracle is obsessed with security. It's an absolute requirement for all our products. The real security issue is when customers take older products that were not built for the Internet, and kind of rack them and put them on the Internet.

The human species was not born into a market economy. Bees won't sell you honey if you offer them an electronic funds transfer. The human species imagined money into existence, and it exists - for us, not mice or wasps - because we go on believing in it.