Quote collection
592 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There is the general belief that the corporation income tax is a tax on the "rich" and on the "fat cats." But with pension funds owning 30% of American large business-and soon to own 50%-the corporation income tax, in effect, eases the load on those in top income brackets and penalizes the beneficiaries of pension funds."
"Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission."
"When it rains manna from heaven, some people put up an umbrella. Others reach for a big spoon."
"They wrongly believe that good intentions move mountains. Bulldozers move mountains. But there are exceptions."
"The true business of every company is to make and keep customers."
"One does not "manage" people. The task is to lead people."
"Vision without execution is delusion. The joy is in the results"
"The company is not and must never claim to be home, family, religion, life or fate for the individual. It must never interfere in his private life or his citizenship. He is tied to the company through a voluntary and cancellable employment contract, not through some mystical or indissoluble bond."
"Unless a decision has degenerated into work, it is not a decision; it is at best a good intention."
"People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs."
"Our most important education system is in the employees' own organization."
"The most critical case in a corporation, especially a big one, is when everything goes well, when you have accomplished your objectives. When the temptation is to work twice as hard instead of saying, "We have accomplished our objectives, we have to think again.""
"All good strategy eventually degenerates into work."
"The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make, for the more new things he will try. I would never promote to a top-level job a man who was not making mistakes...otherwise he is sure to be mediocre."
"For the social ecologist language is not "communication." It is not just "message." It is substance. It is the cement that holds humanity together. It creates community and communication. ...Social ecologists need not be "great" writers; but they have to be respectful writers, caring writers."
"If "socialism" is defined as "ownership of the means of production"--and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition--then the United States is the first truly Socialist country."
"The great mystery isn't that people do things badly but that they occasionally do a few things well. The only thing that is universal is incompetence. Strength is always specific! Nobody ever commented, for example, that the great violinist Jascha Heifetz probably couldn't play the trumpet very well."
"Through systematic terror, through indoctrination, through systematic manipulation of stimulus, reward, and punishment, we can today break man and convert him into brute animal... The first step toward survival is therefore to make government legitimate again by attempting to deprive it of these powers... by international action to ban such powers."
"People are effective because they say 'no,' because they say, 'this isn't for me.'"
"Growth that adds volume without improving productivity is fat. Growth that diminishes productivity is cancer."