20th-century Businessman Quotes

We're working to overcome the overly macho nature of the current online console game world, where a handful of the high testosterone crowd fight for supremacy, while the mass of casual game players stay away.

Reggie Fils-Aimé

Design isn't just about making things beautiful; it's also about making things work beautifully.

Roger Martin (professor)

You can communicate to a new AI. Did you ever see the movie The Matrix? Same interface. Same concept. Only better. Starting from next year, you can chat to the world's first AI!

I encounter one example after another of how relative truth is.

Raoul Wallenberg

For over a half century now I've watched office obesity develop into a full-blown, crippling disease. As our office clutter mounts, we're ever more intimidated and frustrated by it. We engineer drainage and removal of water and liquid wastes from society to prevent hazardous buildup, but the effluent that pours into our offices-paper-is never flushed out.

Bad news sells because the amygdala is always looking for something to fear.

Peter Diamandis

What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group's conclusion is 'no'. The rich countries won't do it. They won't change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?

The purpose of this book is to show how economic analysis can be used in formulating business policies. It is therefore a departure from the main stream of economic writings on the theory of the firm, much of which is too simple in its assumptions and too complicated in its logical development to be managerially useful. The big gap between the problems of logic that intrigue economic theorists and the problems of policy that plague practical management needs to be bridged in order to give executives access to the practical contributions that economic thinking can make to top-management policies.

Truly great brands are far more than just labels for products; they are symbols that encapsulate the desires of consumers; they are standards held aloft under which the masses congregate.

I feel like I'm 80 years young. Make life exciting and you live longer.

Artists need a lot of collectors, all kinds of collectors, buying their art.

Charles Saatchi

Ignore the people who tell you it won't work, and hire people who embrace your vision.

While Apple's attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of Web sites that use Flash. We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple. … even people inside the distortion field [at Apple] will begin to resent being told half a story.

Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds and when they grow up they will change the world.

If you have to have a policy manual, publish the 'Ten Commandments.'

Robert Townsend (author)

Doing the commodity business with China is like drinking coffee. We enjoyed three spoons of sugar per cup for a long time. Suddenly, when that's cut to one and a half spoons, we feel bitter — because it used to be so sweet.

Corporate governance is concerned with holding the balance between economic and social goals and between individual and communal goals. The governance framework is there to encourage the efficient use of resources and equally to require accountability for the stewardship of those resources. The aim is to align as nearly as possible the interests of individuals, corporations and society.

Dominic Cadbury

Once you're head of a public company you are expected to perform; you're like an unpaid greyhound on a racetrack called the stock market. They'd take bets on us, but not add anything at all.

We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in.

I believe that the mindset that allows you to spend your working life thanking and congratulating people rather than being unpleasant to them is the mainstay of good leadership.

Oh, he's football crazy, he's football mad
And the football it has robbed him o' the wee bit sense he had.
And it would take a dozen skivvies, his clothes to wash and scrub,
Since our Jock became a member of that terrible football club.

We are doomed to failure without a daily destruction of our various preconceptions.

Show me a person who never made a mistake, and I will show you a person who never did anything.

William Rosenberg

The greater the handicap, the greater the triumph.

John H. Johnson

It is rare to find an established community of Christians that encourages radical expressions of following Jesus. The natural conservatism of institutions is deeply rooted in the desire to survive, and that desire colors and limits the way they read the Bible and how they see God functioning in the world.

Michael Spencer