Executives say the darndest things: The best quotes

(Editor's note: Paragraph 14 contains language that may be offensive to some readers)

(Reuters) - During this week's Reuters Global Media and Technology Summit, about 30 top-level executives in Asia, Europe and the United States joined Reuters reporters and editors for candid discussions. Here are some of their comments:

Ursula Burns, chief executive of Xerox Corp (XRX.N), when asked about competition with Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N) said in jest:

"We don't partner with HP because we don't like them. We have to have someone not to like. Actually, we like them just fine, we like the people. We cooperate with many of the people we compete with."

Burns, Xerox CEO, when asked for her view on Augusta National Golf Club not extending a membership offer to International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N) CEO Virginia Rometty because of its no-female members policy. This despite granting membership to Rometty's male predecessors as a courtesy for IBM being a major sponsor of the event:

"It's ridiculous. It's just absolutely ridiculous. The way I think about it is, the Masters can do what the hell they want. If they want to actually have no women in the Masters, then women and right-minded men should make a choice about what the hell they want to do with the Masters.

"Society is relatively free. It is very free in this case so I say I am not interested in going to Masters. If they aren't interested in having me there, why would I go? I really have no professional opinion about what Ginny did primarily because I don't know what she had to deal with because she was brand new in the situation.

"So me? Xerox doesn't sponsor the Masters. If they came to me and asked me to sponsor the Masters -- which they wouldn't --the fact that they don't let women in and I'm a woman, I wouldn't sponsor them, plain and simple."

Martin Sorrell, CEO of advertising agency WPP Plc (WPP.L), when asked about the debt standoff between Greece and Germany:

"It reminds me of the game of chicken in 'Rebel Without a Cause' with James Dean, where two cars go to the cliff. James Dean jumps out of the car and all the women in the audience heave a sigh of relief and then the other guy in the car gets his sleeve caught and doesn't get out. And I only hope the Germans don't get their sleeve caught on the side of the door."

Robert Grimshaw, managing director of FT.com, the website of Pearson Plc's (PSON.L) Financial Times, when asked about not developing an app for the Apple Inc (AAPL.O) store and leveraging digital distribution to find customers in new markets such as Australia, where the website has done well:

"We've been publishing since 1883. We don't need Apple to tell people we're here.

"It's not that we did a big marketing campaign in Australia. We didn't wander around the outback with a sandwich board."

Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, co-founder & general manager of Layar, an augmented reality company, when asked how to get media companies to bring the technology to the masses:

"We start with the editors with balls and grow from there."

Will Mills, director of music and content at Shazam, a leading app for music and TV discovery, when asked about the potential for using Shazam in conjunction with live TV broadcasts such the Super Bowl:

"I've got a smart TV and it's pretty dumb. It's a beautiful looking thing, but using a smartphone or a tablet is a much nicer experience than trying to use a remote control to enter a password or select something on a television. I don't see that changing for some time."

Stacy Smith, chief financial officer at Intel Corp (INTC.O), when asked about the growth of interconnected-devices that depend on microchips:

"There's this fundamental trend happening in the marketplace that devices that didn't historically compute are now computing, and it's opening up broad swaths of the market for the kinds of products we do, ranging from cars to phones to tablets to smart signs to security systems to digital TVs."

Follow Reuters Summits on Twitter @Reuters_Summits

(Reporting by Nicola Leske, Sinead Carew, Jennifer Saba, Liana Baker, Noel Randewich, Kate Holton, Harro Ten Wolde, and Paul Sandle; compiled by Peter Lauria; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

(For other news from Reuters Media and Technology Summit, click here)

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