“It is psychology, not soil or climate, that enables a man to raise five times as many potatoes per acre as the average in his own state.”

Source: The twelve principles of efficiency (1912), p. 107 ; cited in: Hugo Münsterberg. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, 1913, p. 52

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Harrington Emerson 9
American efficiency engineer and business theorist 1853–1931

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My own conviction grew that what had happened was that men were putting the cart before the horse. They were looking at the system rather than the people. It seemed to me that man’s capacity for greed, his innate cruelty and selfishness, was being hidden behind a kind of pair of political pants. I believed then, that man was sick — not exceptional man, but average man. I believed that the condition of man was to be a morally diseased creation and that the best job I could do at the time was to trace the connection between his diseased nature and the international mess he gets himself into. To many of you, this will seem trite, obvious, and familiar in theological terms. Man is a fallen being. He is gripped by original sin. His nature is sinful and his state is perilous. I accept the theology and admit the triteness; but what is trite is true; and a truism can become more than a truism when it is a belief passionately held....
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