Quotes about company
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“IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change – Nobel-winning scientific body that informs us about what is the scientific knowledge – issued a report last week, which you can find online. Just google “IPCC 1.5 degrees C” because they were asking the question, what does it take for us to achieve the goal we set in Paris in December 2015 to keep the planet safe? And they said we’re running out of time, that there still is… By a miracle, if the politicians acted and we really focused on it and so on, we could still do it. But, basically, we’re running out of time, because in Canberra and in Washington and in other places they are not representing the common interest at all. They’re representing a few big companies, but not the people.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs (1954) American economist

Climate, Welfare..., Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 15 October, 2018 http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4892252.htm

People, Question, Knowledge, Change

“What picture of American society is likely to be imprinted on the consciousness of average Europeans? Given what they read or hear every day from intellectuals and politicians, they can hardly have any choice in the unpleasant particulars, especially if they happen to be French. The picture repeatedly sketched for them is as follows: American society is entirely ruled by money. No other value, whether familial, moral, religious, civic, cultural, professional, or ethical has any potency in itself. Everything in America is a commodity, regarded and used exclusively for its material value. A person is judged solely by the worth of his bank account. Every U. S. President has been in the pockets of the oil companies, the military-industrial complex, the agricultural lobby, or the financial manipulators of Wall Street. America is the "jungle" par excellence of out-of-control, "savage" capitalism, where the rich are always becoming richer and fewer, while the poor are becoming poorer and more numerous. Poverty is the dominant social reality in America. Hordes of famished indigents are everywhere, while luxurious chauffeured limousines with darkened windows glide through the urban wilderness.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

2000s, Europe's Anti-American Obsession (2003)

Money, Family, Reality, Reading

“Good-breeding, or true politeness, is the art of showing men by external signs the internal regard we have for them. It arises from good sense, improved by good company. It must be acquired by practice and not by books.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Misattributed, Jackson's personal book of maxims

Men, Books, Art, Sense

“Rosanna Spearman had been a thief, and not being of the sort that get up Companies in the City, and rob from thousands, instead of only robbing from one, the law laid hold of her, and the prison and the reformatory followed the lead of the law.”

Wilkie Collins book The Moonstone

[Street, 1868] ( p. 54 https://books.google.com/books?id=FmsOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA18) Also in Convict Voices: Women, Class, and Writing about Prison in Nineteenth-Century England by Anne Schwan [University of New Hampshire Press, 2014, ISBN 1611686725] ( p. 82 https://books.google.com/books?id=sAqXBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA82) The Moonstone (1868)

Law

“In the long run, though, the greatest IT risk facing most companies is more prosaic than a catastrophe. It is, simply, overspending. IT may be a commodity, and its costs may fall rapidly enough to ensure that any new capabilities are quickly shared, but the very fact that it is entwined with so many business functions means that it will continue to consume a large portion of corporate spending.”

Nicholas Carr (1959) American writer

Why IT Doesn't Matter Anymore http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3520.html, Harvard Business Review, June 9, 2003.

Business

“Every company has two organizational structures: the formal one is written on the charts; the other is the everyday living relationship of the men and women in the organization.”

Harold Geneen (1910–1997) American businessman

Managing, Chapter Four (Two Organizational Structures), p. 64.

Women, Men

“Bishop Jeremy Taylor is clear, that men will find it impossible to do anything greatly good, unless they cut off all superfluous company and visits.”

George Horne (1730–1792) English churchman, writer and university administrator

Olla Podrida, No. 9.
Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay, 1880

Men

“Many people find it hard working with their boss and often leave their jobs because of their boss’ working style, behaviours and attitude. I once heard someone say, “I joined the company, but I left my boss.””

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

page 184 Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?id=p24GkAsgjGEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?id=qZjO9_ov74EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id=4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false

People

“To me, there are multifarious forces at work in government departments which are different from those in private business; the responsibility to and necessary interference of Congress, the responsibility to the President, to defined over-all controls, have little parallel in private business. The power politics of government departments are radically different from the power politics of private companies. The existence of pipe lines into Congress strengthens the bureaucracy against the chief executive of the particular subdivision of government. It may strengthen it against the President of the United States or Congress itself. Dimock himself points out how easily government bureaucracies develop organized opposition to policies involving change. This opposition may in substance, though not in form, sabotage all change which appears to threaten the security of the bureaucracy. Power politics, of course, exists in large private companies; but the urge to expand functions and simultaneously to defend what exists seems to me radically less in the case of well-run, large, private industry than in the case of big departments of the government. The quantitative difference becomes a qualitative change.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

"Governmental and Business Executives", 1946

Business, Appearance, Change

“There are times when a company’s know-how, product range, and labor relations are in harmony with the world around it. The business situations are familiar, the company is well organized, and employees are trained and prepared. During those times, managers do not need to develop and implement new ideas. Their job is to allocate resources to promote growth and development, channeling capital and people to the parts of the organization best positioned to benefit from the current state of affairs. Those parts of the organization then become larger, better established, and more powerful.
But just when the company has organized itself, outside circumstances may change. New technologies come on the scene, markets shift, interest rates fluctuate, consumers’ tastes change, and the company must enter a new phase of life. In order to stay in sync with the outside world, it must be able to alter its marketing strategy, its product range, its organizational form, and where and how it does its manufacturing. And once a company has adapted to a new environment, it is no longer the organization it used to be; it has evolved. That is the essence of learning.”

Arie de Geus (1930) Dutch businessman

Cited in: Richard C. Huseman, Jon P. Goodman (1998), Leading with Knowledge: The Nature of Competition in the 21st Century. SAGE Publications, p. 72.
The Living Company, 1997

Life, People, World, Idea

“The men who traveled to California in the Gold Rush years had a conscious sense of the need to organize. There are rules. For instance, no swearing -- literally! They have constitutions, they have these rules and orders: No swearing. No drinking. We will observe the Sabbath. Many a company broke up over the argument of whether or not to observe the Sabbath. 'How can we observe the Sabbath? Here it is the middle of June, we're already behind. These people are passing us on Sunday, they're rolling. How can we sit here?' So they have arguments about it, and companies split up over the moral question of whether to observe the Sabbath or not.”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

The West (1996)

Men, People, Travel, Drink

“RockNet: Were you terribly uncomfortable at the recent Grammy Award Show?
Cornell: I don't know. It's just a strange subject. It's almost as if the music industry is patting itself on the back in a way. This was the seventh Grammy nomination for us and had we won one for our first nomination I would have had a really cool attitude about it because it would have meant that the people who were actually voting were paying attention to music for music's sake as opposed to some other reason.
I was happy that we were nominated because it was an independent record company and it was a low-profile record. We didn't win a Grammy until we'd sold several millions and it seems that what sells a lot is what wins, even though the record may or may not be any good, but that seems to be the requirement.
I'm not critical of the people who work in the music industry, and I appreciate the Grammy. (But) to me it's their party and it's not really mine. It's not for the musicians. It has more to do with the industry. You can tell after a Grammy period all the record labels and artists who won a bunch take out full-page ads in the trades gloating. That's fine. That's what they do, they sell records and they work really hard to develop careers. If they're into it, I'm not going to be disrespectful, but I'd hate for anyone to think that it's something that was a necessity for me or the rest of the band, or that it was a benchmark to us of legitimacy for us because it's not. It doesn't really matter that much to us. It seems like it's for someone else. I'd never get up and say that. If I was totally not into it, the best thing to do is to not show up.
Maybe ten years from now I'll reflect and say "wow, that happened and it was pretty unusual. Not every kid on the block gets to go up and pick up a Grammy Award."”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

It's just one more thing to take the focus away from what we like to do, which is to write music and make records and try not to think about anything whether it's how many records we sell or what people think of us. For us, I think the key to success for being a band and always making good records is always going to be forgetting about everything else outside our own little band. RockNet Interview: Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, May 1, 1996 https://web.archive.org/web/19961114054327/http://www.rocknet.com/may96/soundgar.html, Soundgarden Era

Hate, Happiness, People, Music

“I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

“Look, it was an accident. Five thousand accidents happen every day -- bizarre, tragic, farcical… they're Acts of God fit only to amaze the survivors and irritate the Insurance Company…”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

A Zed and Two Noughts

God

“That a joint stock company should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all experience.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article I, p. 810.

“They (the British Rulers) devised for us an educational system in which all independence of thought would be stifled from the very first stages of one's school life—for, according to Macaulay, such a system was the best means of obtaining suitable clerks for the offices of the East India Company and, besides, of training obedient subjects.”

Muhammad Asad (1900–1992) Austro-Hungarian writer and academic

Source: This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987), Chapter: Calling All Muslims, Radio Broadcast # 6, p 112

Life, Education, School, Training

“I'm very excited about this wonderful opportunity to take part in the evolution of a company that is integral to the Hispanic community and a powerful force in all areas of the media.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

statement issued regarding appointment to board of directors of Univision Communications, miamiherald.com (June 9, 2007)
2007, 2008

Communication, Parting

“What delight will it afford to renew the sweet counsel we have taken together, to recount the toils, the combats, and the labor of the way, and to approach, not the house, but the throne of God, in company, in order to join in the symphonies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves amidst the splendors and fruitions of the beatific vision.”

Robert Hall (1764–1831) British Baptist pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 306.

God, Way, Housing

“In addition to technical problems, systems also have organizational and logistical problems. Many different people may be involved over a wide physical or geographic coverage and over a long period of time. Many may work for different companies or organizations with different rules and methods of operating. Very many data and much knowledge are involved. The organizational problem concerns itself with the question of how all these people can work together most effectively for the common purpose.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. 24; First paragraph of Ch. 2. System Organization, Scheduling, and Record-Keeping

People, Question, Knowledge, Problem

“Don't you think that's the way to persuade more companies to come to this region and get more jobs—because I want them—for the people who are unemployed. Not always standing there as moaning minnies.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Now stop it! Remarks to Tyne Tees TV (11 September 1985) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106127 Second term as Prime Minister

People, Way, Thinking

“Although previously the monoamine systems were considered to be responsible for the development of major depressive disorder (MDD), the available evidence to date does not support a direct causal relationship with MDD. There is no simple direct correlation of serotonin or norepinephrine levels in the brain and mood. In other words, after a half-century of research, the chemical-imbalance hypothesis as promulgated by the drug companies that manufacture SSRIs and other antidepressants is not only without clear and consistent support, but has been disproved by experimental evidence.”

Irving Kirsch book The Emperor's New Drugs

The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth. p. 92 http://books.google.com/books?id=wk-OxcTKyi4C&pg=PA92

Mood, Support

“What I think needs to be done in 2018 is more dialogue around the ethics, the principles that we can use for the engineers and companies that are building AI [artificial intelligence], so that the choices we make do not cause us to create systems with bias.”

Satya Nadella (1967) CEO of Microsoft appointed on 4 February 2014

Scroll.in: "Artificial intelligence will not kill human jobs, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella" https://scroll.in/latest/880684/artificial-intelligence-will-not-kill-human-jobs-says-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella (29 May 2018)

Intelligence, Thinking

“I’ve lived on my own since I was 13 and not been to school and brought a son up who’s now 18 and run theatre companies and bought a butcher’s shop, learnt guitar by myself, taught myself to sing and that sort of stuff.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Billen, Andrew. "I Made More Money As A Stripper..." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article445303.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2, (2004-06-15) On teaching herself to paint.

School, Singing

“traditional media companies are not generating any profits from their Internet ventures.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Internet Galaxy - Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (2001), Chapter 7, Multimedia and the Internet, p. 191

“There are many examples of companies and countries that have improved their competitiveness and efficiency by adopting open source strategies. The creation of skills through all levels is of fundamental importance to both companies and countries.”

Mark Shuttleworth (1973) South African entrepreneur; second self-funded visitor to the International Space Station

Go Open Source puts R3m into building Linux channel, Tectonic staff, Tectonic, South Africa, 2006-01-30, 2011-09-11 http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=840,

Country

“Maybe you're lonely,
And only want a little company,
But keep your recipes
For the rats to eat,
And may they rest in peace with coffee homeground.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Lionheart (1978)

Peace, Coffee

“Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from these rules, in consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 820.

Appearance

“When someone is made the head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message: If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.”

David Ogilvy (1911–1999) Advertising executive

Ogilvy on Advertising, p. 47

People

“Overmature trees: In timber company and Forest Service lingo, trees which may live in splendor for another 500 years, but which would make damned fine boards today.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Beyond Hypocrisy, 1992, Doublespeak Dictionary (within Beyond Hypocrisy), p. 161.

Tree

“Over the past decade, I have watched more than 100 companies try to remake themselves into significantly better competitors. They have included large organizations (Ford) and small ones (Landmark Communications), companies based in the United States (General Motors) and elsewhere (British Airways), corporations that were on their knees (Eastern Airlines), and companies that were earning good money ((Bristol-Myers Squibb). Their efforts have gone under many banners: total quality management, reengineering, right-sizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnarounds. But, in almost every case, the basic goal has been the same: to make fundamental changes in how business is conducted in order to help cope with a new, more challenging market environment.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

John P. Kotter, "Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail." in: Harvard Business Review. March-April 1995. p. 59.

Money, Communication, Business, Effort

“Bad company will lead a man to the gallows!”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

Le cattive compagnie conducono gli uomini alle forche.
Act IV, scene vi
The Mandrake (1524)

“Market share was the grand old metric, the guiding light, the compass of the product-centric age. Companies focused on improving their product and building economies of scale. This product-centric thinking led to the battle cry: "Get more market share and the profit will follow."”

Adrian Slywotzky (1951) American economist

Source: The Profit Zone (2007), p. 3.

Age, Thinking, Light, Cry

“I guess Senator Sanders, that the Koch brothers, as you said, are sensible with how they use their money. And I agree with you. They stand for things that I find abhorrent, that would be bad for our country, bad for our future. But they did just put up a little video praising you for being the only Democrat who stood with the Republicans to try to eliminate the Export/Import Bank, which has helped hundreds and hundreds of companies here in Florida be able to export their goods and employ more Floridians. So from my perspective, you sided with the Koch brothers.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Money, Future, Help, Country

“A company will get nowhere if all of the thinking is left to management.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Akio Morita, cited in: John Raymond Phillips (1994) The future of labor-management cooperative programs. p. 6.
Made in Japan (1986)

Thinking

“I believe that in a leadership company most people will like their work. But the company will be an even more enjoyable place to work if the culture is designed to make it that way. Leading fosters a working atmosphere that stimulates an open exchange of ideas and fosters dissent. People should show a genuine concern for one another and treat one another with fairness, as peers and friends. With such an atmosphere it should be a pleasure to come to work.”

Marvin Bower (1903–2003) American business theorist

Source: The Will to Manage (1966), p. 131

People, Pleasure, Way, Idea

“Companies are in the midst of a revolutionary transformation. Industrial age competition is shifting to information age competition. During the industrial age, from 1850 to about 1975, companies succeeded by how well they could capture the benefits from economies of scale and scope. Technology mattered, but, ultimately, success accrued to companies that could embed the new technology into physical assets that offered efficient, mass production of standard products.
During the industrial age, financial control systems were developed in companies, such as General Motors, DuPont, Matsushita, and General Electric, to facilitate and monitor efficient allocations of financial and physical capital. A summary financial measure such as return-on-capital employed (ROCE) could both direct a company’s internal capital to its most productive use and monitor the efficiency by which operating divisions used financial and physical capital to create value for shareholders.
The emergence of the information era, however, in the last decades of the twentieth century, made obsolete many of the fundamental assumptions of industrial age competition. No longer could companies gain sustainable competitive advantage by merely deploying new technology into physical assets rapidly, and by excellent management of financial assets and liabilities.”

Robert S. Kaplan (1940) American accounting academic

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 2-3

Age, Success

“Birkenstock desert boots have been a part of pop culture since the beatniks. I made such a fuzz about them being discontinued that the company send me an "lifetime supply", which initially turned out to be seven pairs at two years apiece. They weren’t giving me very long. I think that’s why I gave up smoking.”

Johnny Marr (1963) musician

from "Pieces of me", The Guardian (June 2007).

Thinking, Parting

“A few years ago I got a phone call from a marketing executive who wanted to light up the Moon with the logo of her company. She wanted to know how she might proceed. After slamming down the phone, I called her back and politely explained why it was a bad idea. Other corporate executives have asked me how to put into orbit mile-wide luminous banners with catchy slogans written across them, much like the skywriting or flag-dragging airplanes you see at sports events or over the ocean from a crowded beach. I always threaten to send the light police after them.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Let There Be Dark, Natural History Magazine, October 2002, 2018-24-03 http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2002/10/01/let-there-be-dark, 2000s

Idea, Sport, Light

“Even the oil companies don't need an incentive of $4 billion to go out and explore. As my grandpop would say, 'They’re doing just fine, thank you.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Speech to national conference of the National Association of Black Journalists, Washington, D.C. (June 20, 2012), quoted in * 2012-06-20 Biden: 'A gaffe is when you tell the truth' Talia Buford Politico

https://www.politico.com/blogs/politico44/2012/06/biden-a-gaffe-is-when-you-tell-the-truth-126866

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Joe Biden / Quotes / 2010s / 2012
2012

“I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Journal to Stella (May 17, 1711)

Love

“This naive manner of conceptualizing capitalism by reference to a “pursuit of gain” must be relegated to the kindergarten of cultural history methodology and abandoned once and for all. A fully unconstrained compulsion to acquire goods cannot be understood as synonymous with capitalism, and even less as its “spirit.” On the contrary, capitalism can be identical with the taming of this irrational motivation, or at least with its rational tempering. Nonetheless, capitalism is distinguished by the striving for profit, indeed, profit is pursued in a rational, continuous manner in companies and firms, and then pursued again and again, as is profitability. There are no choices. If the entire economy is organized according to the rules of the open market, any company that fails to orient its activities toward the chance of attaining profit is condemned to bankruptcy.
Let us begin by defining terms in a manner more precise than often occurs. For us, a "capitalist" economic act involves first of all an expectation of profit based on the utilization of opportunities for exchange; that is of (formally) peaceful opportunities for acquisition. Formal and actual acquisition through violence follows its own special laws and hence should best be placed, as much as one may recommend doing so, in a different category. Wherever capitalist acquisition is rationally pursued, action is oriented to calculation in terms of capital. What does this mean?”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Prefatory Remarks to Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion (1920)

Peace, Law, History, Motivation

“Part of it, which perhaps you and most other observers are not aware, is that I have enough passive income, and enough dispassion for conventional status signaling, that my marginal utility of money is pretty low compared to my disutility for doing busywork. To put it in perspective, I quit my last regular job in 2002, and stopped doing consulting for that company as well (at $100/hour) a year later when they merged with Microsoft and told me I had to do a bunch of paperwork and be hired by Microsoft's "independent consulting company" in order to continue.”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jter3YhFBZFYo8vtq/look-for-the-next-tech-gold-rush#ikKBYevf2aL2pBwsS on LessWrong, July 2014

Money, Parting

“Okay, I get it. You people destroy billions of brain cells on a daily basis with your excess consumption of alcoholic beverages, over-the-counter as well as prescription medication—the latter of which, chances are, aren't even yours—and a veritable laundry list of substances that you shove into your soft little bodies day after day. The reason I bring up your chemically-induced mind is because I think the lot of you have forgotten my accomplishments, so please allow me to jog your ailing memory: I am the only three-time straight-edge World Heavyweight Champion in WWE history, I am the only Superstar in WWE history to win back-to-back Money in the Bank Ladder Matches at WrestleMania, and don't forget I am the man that did you, the WWE Universe, a favor that you didn't even deserve when I got rid of the Charismatic Enabler Jeff Hardy from this company…forever. But that runs a close #2 to my crowning achievement of using my Anaconda Vice and, for the first time, making the Undertaker [makes the motion on his chest] tap out—I did that. Me. I did that, and I did it all without drugs, I did it all without alcohol, and above all else, I did it all without any help from any of you. So I want somebody, anybody in a position of power to come out here right now and treat me with the respect I have earned, not only as the face of SmackDown, but the poster boy of the entire company, and as the choice of a new generation, I deserve to know who my next opponent is now that I have defeated the all-powerful Undertaker. [Waits amidst the boos of the crowd] Oh, that's right. There isn't anybody left!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

September 25, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Money, People, Alcohol, World

“Make your company a rarity, and people will value it. Men despise what they can easily have.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

Men, People

“Business reengineering isn't about fixing anything. Business reengineering means starting all over, starting from scratch. Business reengineering means putting aside much of the received wisdom of two hundred years of industrial management,… How people and companies did things yesterday doesn't matter to the business reengineer.”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

Source: Reengineering the Corporation, 1993, p. 2

Wisdom, People, Business

“The tradition of "turkey pardoning" in the US is a wonderful allegory for new racism. Every year, the National Turkey Federation presents the US president with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every year, in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the president spares that particular bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon, the Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its natural life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are slaughtered and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company that has won the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the press.

That's how new racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys - the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell, or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself) - are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park.
The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically, they're for the pot. But the fortunate fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and the World Trade Organisation - so who can accuse those organisations of being anti-turkey? Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee - so who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalisation? There's a stampede to get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way?”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/569/569p12.htm given at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, 16 January 2004 Speeches

Life, Children, World, School

“I know I shall be called heterodox, and that unseen lightning flashes and unheard thunderbolts will be playing around my head, when I say that women will never be profound students in any other department except music while they give four hours a day to the practice of music. I should by all means encourage every woman who is born with musical gifts to study music; but study it as a science and an art, and not as an accomplishment; and to every woman who is not musical, I should say, 'Don't study it at all;' you cannot afford four hours a day, out of some years of your life, just to be agreeable in company upon possible occasions. If for four hours a day you studied, year after year, the science of language, for instance, do you suppose you would not be a linguist? Do you put the mere pleasing of some social party, and the reception of a few compliments, against the mental development of four hours a day of study of something for which you were born? When I see that girls who are required by their parents to go through with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for which God designed them, would do for them. I should think that to a real scientist in music there would be something mortifying in this rush of all women into music; as there would be to me if I saw every girl learning the constellations, and then thinking she was an astronomer!”

Maria Mitchell (1818–1889) American astronomer

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896, p. 189.

Love, Life, Women, God

“It was insane, I wish I had filmed it. It was like bringing an audience to the Mona Lisa and asking, 'Do you know why she is smiling?' 'Sorry Leonardo, you'll have to make some changes.' At least the audience understood that THX was not a love story set in the 25th century, which was the way Warners had planned to advertise it. Instead the company settled for 'Visit the future, where love is the ultimate crime.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

On a test audience screening of THX 1138
Interview with Judy Stone (1971)

Love, Smile, Way, Change

“Resilience is based on the ability to embrace the extremes—while not becoming an extremist. Most companies don't do paradox very well.”

Gary Hamel (1954) American management expert

Source: Leading the Revolution, 2002, p. 25

“He had never been lonely in his life before he met her, having at the worst found good company in himself; but now he longed for a companion, and out of all the many millions of the earth's inhabitants there was only one that he wanted.”

John Buchan book The House of the Four Winds

Prologue
The House of the Four Winds (1935)

Life

“Despite their old marketing campaign, Apple is not the company "for the rest of us." Apple's primary goal is meeting Apple's goals, often without regard to who is hurt along the way.”

David Gewirtz American journalist

How many American jobs will Steve Jobs destroy? http://zdnet.com/blog/government/how-many-american-jobs-will-steve-jobs-destroy/9139 in ZDNet (22 June 2010)

Way, Hurt

“When the ANC says that they will target British companies, this shows what a typical terrorist organisation it is. I fought terrorism all my life and if more people fought it, and we were all more successful, we should not have it and I hope that everyone in this hall will think it is right to go on fighting terrorism. They will if they believe in democracy.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Press Conference (17 October 1987) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106948, in answer to Alan Merrydew of BCTV News who asked what her response was "to a reported ANC statement that they will target British firms in South Africa?" Third term as Prime Minister

Life, People, Hope, Democracy

“Good mission statements focus on a limited number of goals, stress the company’s major policies and values, and define the company’s major competitive scopes. These include:”

Philip Kotler (1931) American marketing author, consultant and professor

Industry scope: The industry or range of industries in which a company will operate. For example, DuPont operates in the industrial market... and 3M will go into almost any industry where it can make money.
Products and applications scope: The range of products and applications that a company will supply. St. Jude Medical aims to “serve physicians worldwide with high-quality products for cardiovascular care.”
Competence scope: The range of technological and other core competencies that a company will master and leverage. Japan’s NEC has built its core competencies in computing, communications, and components to support production of laptop computers, televisions, and other electronics items.
Market-segment scope: The type of market or customers a company will serve. For example, Porsche makes only expensive cars for the upscale market and licenses its name for high-quality accessories.
Vertical scope : The number of channel levels from raw material to final product and distribution in which a company will participate... [or] may outsource design, manufacture, marketing, and physical distribution.
Geographical scope: The range of regions or countries in which a company will operate. At one extreme are companies that operate in a specific city or state...
A company must redefine its mission if that mission has lost credibility or no longer defines an optimal course for the company
Source: Marketing Management, Millenium Edition, 2001, p. 41 ; Chapter 3. Corporate and Division Strategic Planning

“We are the only ones who can harness the power of software and deliver it through devices and services that truly empower every individual and every organization. We are the only company with history and continued focus in building platforms and ecosystems that create broad opportunity.”

Satya Nadella (1967) CEO of Microsoft appointed on 4 February 2014

Meet the new CEO: Satya Nadella's email to Microsoft employees http://infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/meet-the-new-ceo-satya-nadellas-email-microsoft-employees-235678 in InfoWorld (4 February 2014)

History

“Project management is the planning, organizing, directing, and controlling of company resources for a relatively short-term objective that has been established to complete specific goals and objectives. Furthermore, project management utilises the systems approach to management by having functional personnel (the vertical hierarchy) assigned to a specific project”

Harold Kerzner (1940) American engineer, management consultant

the horizontal hierarchy
Source: Project management for executives (1982), p. 3

“WFT-II was the only British software company that could be mentioned in the same sentence as such major U. S. companies as Microsoft or Lotus. The sentence would probably run along the lines of "WFT-II, unlike such major U. S. companies as Microsoft or Lotus …"”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

but it was a start.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

“The history of the twelve-week return to the so-called original conditions of work is soon told. The daily and weekly output rose to a point higher than at any other time and in the whole period "there was no downward trend." At the end of twelve weeks, in period thirteen, the group returned, as had been arranged, to the conditions of period seven with the sole difference that whereas the Company continued to supply coffee or other beverage for the mid-morning lunch, the girls now provided their own food. This arrangement lasted for thirty-one weeks—much longer than any previous change. Whereas in period twelve the group's output had exceeded that of all the other performances, in period thirteen, with rest-pauses and refreshment restored, their output rose once again to even greater heights”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Source: The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilisation, (1933), p. 65, chapter 3: The Hawthorne experiment Western Electric Company

Food, History, Girl, Coffee

“The numbers make it clear that the future of [Apple] is no longer in its consumer products. The fix? Apple should release a version of iOS for non-Apple devices. This suggestion will seem like heresy to the brand's loyalists, but it may be necessary for the success of the company. … Without expanding its operating system, the future looks bleak for Apple.”

Vivek Wadhwa American academic

Why Apple needs to liberate iOS http://venturebeat.com/2016/07/27/why-apple-needs-to-liberate-ios in VentureBeat (27 July 2016)

Success, Future

“My brother works for a forestry commission. He writes only in green ink to persuade his bosses to make it a standard ecological colour for all forestry business. I asked him what colour ink he would use if he gave up eating whale meat and worked for a whaling company. He said whales were colour blind.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

One of the calligraphers
The Pillow Book

Business

“Under the market system, there is demand for a product if a lot of people want it - but that demand counts for nothing if those people have no money. If they lack money, their demand essentially doesn't exist…This explains why the drug industry is not investing money to develop a cure for a disease known as sleeping sickness, which leaves its victims in a coma. The disease…killed 66,000 people last year and threatens to infect 60 million more - but the only people who are afflicted by it are poverty-stricken Africans with no clout in the marketplace. Interestingly, there is a drug called eflornithine that is effective in lifting victims out of their comas. But drug companies stopped producing eflornithine in 1995 because it was no longer profitable to continue. The drug was still desperately needed, but only by people without money. So, following modern market practices, these people were simply left in a coma.”

Linda McQuaig (1951) journalist and author

All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (2001)

Money, People, Disease, Sleep

“We didn't have a feasible business model, let's put it this way, because when we started, the business model is to provide the backend search technology to the portal companies in China. We did that, we came up with very good Chinese search engine technology and we signed up a lot of the Chinese portals in a very short period of time that includes SINA, Sohu, Netease, Yahoo! China and any partol company you can think of in China.”

Robin Li (1968) billionaire businessman and entrepreneur

Source: Opportunities in China at the Age of Innovation https://ecorner.stanford.edu/in-brief/opportunities-in-china-at-the-age-of-innovation/,Stanford eCorner(2009-09-23).

Way, Search, Business, Thinking

“We got the word that the four of them were coming a month before they arrived. Scattered all across the country in the different hospitals as we were, it was amazing how fast word of any change got back to us. When it did, we passed it back and forth among ourselves by letter or post card. We had our own private network of communications flung all across the map of the nation.
There were only four of them this time. But what an important four. Winch. Strange. Prell. And Landers. About the four most important men the company had held.”

James Jones book Whistle

First lines.
Whistle (1978)

Men, Communication, Change, Time

“I always come back to variations of the question that my son asked me when he was three. We were sitting in a jacuzzi, and he said, "Dad, why do we exist?" There is no other question. Nobody has any other question. We have variations of this one question, from three onwards. So when you spend time in a company, in a bureaucracy, in an organization and you're saying, boy -- how many people do you know who on their death beds said, boy, I wish I had spent more time at the office? So there's a whole thing of having the courage now -- not in a week, not in two months, not when you find out you have something -- to say, no, what am I doing this for? Stop everything. Let me do something else. And it will be okay, it will be much better than what you're doing, if you're stuck in a process.”

Ricardo Semler (1959) Brazilian businessman

TED: "How to run a company with (almost) no rules" https://www.ted.com/talks/ricardo_semler_how_to_run_a_company_with_almost_no_rules/ (October 2014)

Death, People, Boy, Courage

“You get the picture. And so did BMW. When they bought the company they could have fitted a new body to one of their 7 Series. That's what Mercedes did to create the Maybach. But instead of wandering around the BMW spare-parts division saying, "What do we want?" the engineers fired up their computers and asked, "What do we need?". Plainly they looked at what Henry Royce and Charles Rolls were trying to achieve a hundred years ago, and thought, "Zis is vot ve must do also."”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

And as a result the Rolls-Royce Phantom is quite simply the best car in the world.
Rolls-Royce, p. 24
I Know You Got Soul (2004)

World, Cars, Parting

“We hired truly great people and gave them the room to do great work. A lot of companies […] hire people to tell them what to do. We hire people to tell us what to do. We figure we're paying them all this money; their job is to figure out what to do and tell us.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

The management philosophy here really is to give people enough rope to hang themselves. We hire people to tell us what to do. That's what we pay them for. 1990s Source: Steve Jobs, 1996, Fresh Air radio interview by Terry Gross, npr.org http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141115121/steve-jobs-computer-science-is-a-liberal-art, audio 26:30/31:05 Source: Steve Jobs 1982, interview in InfoWorld March 4, 1982, p.15 books.google https://books.google.fr/books?id=gT4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA15&dq=rope

Money, People

“Management problems are not respecters of the company organization, nor of the talents of the people appointed to solve them.”

Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor

Source: Management Science (1968), Chapter 5, It Works, p. 117.

People, Problem

“As in hunting, so in hawking, the sportsmen had their peculiar impressions, and therefore the tyro in the art of falconry is recommended to learn the following arrangement of terms as they were to be applied to the different kinds of birds assembled in companies. A sege of herons, and of bitterns; an herd of swans, of cranes, and of curlews; a dopping of sheldrakes; a spring of teels; a covert of cootes; a gaggle of geese; a badelynge of ducks; a sord or sute of mallards; a muster of peacoccks; a nye of pheasants; a bevy of quails; a covey of partridges; a congregation of plovers; a flight of doves; a dule of turtles; a walk of snipes; a fall of woodcocks; a brood of hens; a building of rooks; a murmuration of starlings; an exaltation of larks; a flight of swallows; a host of sparrows; a watch of nightingales; and a charm of goldfinches.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 37
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Collective nouns

Art, Spring, Bird, Learning

“Circle' was published at last [constructivist manifesto, in 1937 - with Naum Gabo, Ben Nicholson a. o. ]. Mondrian has made his studio opposite so very beautiful, and his company was always inspiring, as it had been in Paris when we used to visit him. After a while he really seemed to our domestic scene. His studio and Ben’s [the sculptor Ben Nicholson; Barbara was his wife then] were most austere, but my studio was a jumble of children, rocks, sculptures, trees, importunate flowers and washing.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1961 - 1975, Barbara Hepworth, A Pictorial autobiography', 1970, p. 283

Children, Beauty, Flowers, Tree

“In addition to valuable contributions to journalism, Bradley's reporting also spurred social activism, but also spurred change with his reporting on AIDS in Africa, Death by Denial, which helped influence drug companies into discounting and donating AIDS drugs to Africa.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Congressman Bob Brady, Congressional Record, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2006-12-06/html/CREC-2006-12-06-pt2-PgH8798-3.htm, Honoring the Contributions and Life of Edward R. Bradley, H8798-H8800; Volume 152, Number 133, December 6, 2006, United States House of Representatives , printed by the United States Government Printing Office]
About

Death, Change, Help

“Raised an Army brat in a constantly changing scene, Kitsy has always been at ease in any company. While she enjoys formal affairs, she has such an air of informality that in her corner of the room ritual is soon dispensed with. Kitsy was much impressed with the wives of Vietnamese officials. If the Vietnamese men, she liked to say, were half as strong as their women, the country would have no problem. She enjoyed their sense of humor, their propensity for earthly jokes. When she had difficulty deciphering the mixture of languages and getting to the point, one or another of the ladies would take her aside and explain. Kitsy shares some of my lack of affinity for foreign languages; her attempts at French drew the same wry smiles as my attempts at Vietnamese. Kitsy's sense of humor has brightened many an occasion. At a ceremony unveiling my official superintendent's portrait at West Point, the master of ceremonies asked her to say a few words. "This is the second time I have seen Westy unveiled," said Kitsy. "The first time was on our wedding night."”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 263.

Women, Men, Smile, Problem

“Dialogue in Hell:
Seventeenth Dialogue

Montesquieu:… Now I understand the apologue the god Vishnu; you have a hundred arms like the Hindu idol and each one of your fingers touches a spring. In the same way that you touch everything, are you also able to see everything?
Machiavelli: Yes, for I shall make of the police an institution so vast that in the heart of my kingdom half of the people shall see the other half…
…If, as I scarcely doubt, I succeed in attaining this result, here are some of the forms by which my police would manifest themselves abroad: men of pleasure and good company in the foreign courts, to keep an eye on the intrigues of the princes and of the exiled pretenders…the establishment of political newspapers in the great capitals, printers and book stores places in the same conditions and secretly subsidized.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Men, God, People, Pleasure

“I ordered Major [transport company] tomorrow afternoon 2 o'clock to pack the paintings, I am still completely in all the paintings - as nightmares they are flying around me, now you know as of old how that is, but tomorrow afternoon at 2 o'clock I am free. I believe there are nice things among them, the drawing has become a little too fat, but there is much good in it, and it is very well-finished. I send to Peacock. The forest with wood hackers, which was hanging above the door of my studio, then the sheep [small composition-sketch of a sheep herd with shepherd] and... I believe you know them all, 7 pieces together, afterwards I have to start working for Arnold & Tripp [art-sellers in Paris], I let those guys wait and that's not right to do..”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018 (version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) Morgen middag 2 uur heb ik Majoor [transportbedrijf] besteld om de schilderijen in te pakken ik ben nu nog geheel in alle die schilderijen als nacht merries zijn ze om me heen nu je weet wel van ouds, hoe of dat is maar morgen om 2 uur ben ik vrij. Ik geloof dat er aardige dingen bij zijn, de teekening is wel wat dik geworden, doch veel goeds er in, en erg af ik verzend aan Peacock Het bosch met hout hakkers, dat boven de deur van mijn atelier hing dan de schapen [klein compositieschetsje schaapskudde met herder] en [klein compositieschetsje schapen op bospad] en [klein compositieschetsje met schaapskudde] en [klein compositieschetsje koe?] en [klein compositieschetsje schaapskudde met vliegdennen] en de teekening (schapen uit het bosch komende) ik geloof dat je ze allen kent, 7 stuks te zamen, ik moet daarna ook voor Arnold & Tripp [kunsthandelaars in Parijs] aan de gang, die luitjes laat ik maar wachten en dat mag niet.. In a letter of Mauve from Laren, 27 June 1887 original text of the letter in RKD Archive https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/10, The Hague 1880's

Art, Guy, Waiting, Drawing

“The current inclination of the company is to invest heavily … we test stuff and, when it works, we put a lot more emphasis on it. So, Google+ — all the signs are very positive, so now the whole company is ramping up on top of it.”

Eric Schmidt (1955) software engineer, businessman

With 'Millions' Of Users & Growing, Google+ Set To Power All Google Products http://searchengineland.com/with-millions-of-users-growing-google-set-to-power-all-google-products-85032 in Search Engine Land (9 July 2011).

“No question of priority arose to embarrass me in my loyalties to the railway companies until the Parliamentary session of 1924-25… In Scotland the Dean of Faculty [of Advocates] is the deciding authority… He pointed out that the L. M. S. Company which was claiming me was not the L. M. S. Company which had retained me… So I was awarded to the L. N. E. R. and duly appeared in the Committee Rooms on their behalf.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 138-9

Question, Appearance, Loyalty

“Out whole civilization was a cemetery where Jesus Christ and Socrates, Mozart and Haydn, Dante and Goethe were but indecipherable names on moldering stones; and the mourners who stood round affecting a pretense of sorrow would give much to believe in these inscriptions which once were holy, or at least to utter one heart-felt word of grief and despair about this world that is no more. And nothing was left them but the embarrassed grimaces of a company round a grave.”

Hermann Hesse book Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf (1927)

World, Heart, Christ, Despair

“Oh, what company good poets are!”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Longfellow (1882)

“Through all the years that I have been in business I have never yet found our business bad as a result of any outside force. It has always been due to some defect in our own company, and whenever we located and repaired that defect our business became good again - regardless of what anyone else might be doing. And it will always be found that this country has nationally bad business when business men are drifting, and that business is good when men take hold of their own affairs, put leadership into them, and push forward in spite of obstacles. Only disaster can result when the fundamental principles of business are disregarded and what looks like the easiest way is taken. These fundamentals, as I see them, are:
(1) To make an ever increasingly large quantity of goods of the best possible quality, to make them in the best and most economical fashion, and to force them out onto the market.
(2) To strive always for higher quality and lower prices as well as lower costs.
(3) To raise wages gradually but continuously B and never to cut them.
(4) To get the goods to the consumer in the most economical manner so that the benefits of low cost production may reach him.
These fundamentals are all summed up in the single word 'service'… The service starts with discovering what people need and then supplying that need according to the principles that have just been given.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Henry Ford in: Justus George Frederick (1930), A Philosophy of Production: A Symposium, p. 32; as cited in: Morgen Witzel (2003) Fifty Key Figures in Management. p. 196

Men, People, Way, Fashion

“There are different phases of companies. When you’re in the tens of people, the idea itself either attracts people or it doesn’t. People are there because they think the problem you’re trying to solve is just that important.”

Marissa Mayer (1975) American business executive and engineer, former ceo of Yahoo!

The New York Times: "Marissa Mayer Is Still Here" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/business/marissa-mayer-corner-office.html (18 April 2018)

People, Idea, Problem, Thinking

“Should we worry about social media sites sharing everything they know about us with third-party commercial interests? Of course, no one wants to be pestered by targeted advertising. More sinister, however, is the prospect of health insurance companies learning whether you had been Googling research on specific illnesses or prospective employers prying into your personal social history by analyzing your data trail on the Web to spot potential quirks, idiosyncrasies, or even possible antisocial behavior.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

Health, Behavior, History, Learning

“The future lies with those companies who see the poor as their customers.”

C.K. Prahalad (1941–2010) Indian academic

C.K. Prahlad, cited in: Bibek Debroy, ‎Amir Ullah Khan (2004), Integrating the Rural Poor Into Markets. p. 17

Future

“I think we need to do much more with our tech companies to prevent ISIS and their operatives from being able to use the Internet to radicalize, even direct people in our country and Europe and elsewhere. But we also have to intensify our air strikes against ISIS and eventually support our Arab and Kurdish partners to be able to actually take out ISIS in Raqqa, end their claim of being a Caliphate.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

People, Support, Thinking, Country

“God hath in truth testified in His Book and so also have testified the company of His angels, His Messengers and those endued with divine knowledge, that thou hast believed in God and in His signs and that everyone is guided aright by virtue of thy guidance. This is indeed a boundless grace which God, the Ever-Living, the Self-Subsisting, hath graciously conferred upon thee aforetime and will confer hereafter. And since thou didst believe in God before the creation, He hath in truth, at His own behest, raised thee up in every Revelation. There is no God but Him, the Sovereign Protector, the All-Glorious.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to the First Letter of the Living

God, Truth, Books, Angels

“Voulagris asked me to find film funding for what was to be the last but unfinished film project of Elia Kazan, a personal friend of Voulgaris. The subject of the film was the immigration of the Kazan family from the beleaguered Greek minority communities under Turkish rule in Asia Minor to the safe haven of the USA where the Kazan family settled. I arranged a meeting between Elia Kazan and the London based film financier Frixos Constantini of Poseidon Films at the Grand Bretagne Hotel in Athens. What followed from this meeting is that Mr Constantini put Elia Kazan in touch with Martin Scorsese a personal friend of Mr Constantini and who also runs the production company Cappa films. And so it was that these two giants of US cinema met for the first time.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

Family, Communication, Time, Personality

“We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed. Yet that is precisely what the internet, and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide. We need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning. And we need to do everything we can at home to reduce the risks of extremism online.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech after the London Bridge attack (4 June 2017)

Home

“If somehow we could snap our fingers and there would no longer be any drugs in the world whatsoever, would there be no more addiction? Would there be no more suffering? Or is it possible that addiction is not really about drugs, that addiction is really about the relationships that human beings form with one another and all sorts of things? That it's about the difference between establishing good relationships and bad relationships? Who is going to be in control? Who is going to say what this relationship should be between ourselves and these plants and chemicals and substances?… Is this a decision that we just put in the hands of government? Is this a decision we put just in the hands of doctors? Just in the hands of the pharmaceutical companies, the tobacco companies, the alcohol companies and all the other corporations that profit off of the production and sale of these things? The true challenge is how do we learn to live with these substances in such a way that they cause the least possible harm and the greatest possible good. What will cause people to wake up and say "Stop?" What will cause people to say, "Enough is enough?"”

Ethan Nadelmann (1957) American writer; campaigner for the legalization of marijuana

What will cause people to say, "I value my freedom even if that freedom involves a measure of risk?" Video address, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBW07ITbagc hosted on YouTube http://www.youtube.com by user "droppingknowledge." The War on Drugs

People, Alcohol, World, Way

“They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U. S. international–U. S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U. S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that–like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups. So, you know, don’t tell me that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it. And in some cases, I literally was involved in the technology that was going after this stuff.”

Russ Tice (1961) former intelligence analyst

As told to Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frog Post News, which is the website of Sibel Edmonds, a high-level FBI whistle-blower NSA Whistleblower: NSA Spying On – and Blackmailing – Top Government Officials and Military Officers, Fox News, 2013-06-20 http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/06/20/nsa-whistleblower-nsa-spying-%E2%80%93-and-blackmailing-%E2%80%93-top-government-officials-and-military,

People, World, Law, Intelligence

“We invested in a solar company, our country. That was a disaster. They lost plenty of money on that one. Now, look, I'm a great believer in all forms of energy, but we're putting a lot of people out of work. Our energy policies are a disaster. Our country is losing so much in terms of energy, in terms of paying off our debt. You can't do what you're looking to do with $20 trillion in debt. The Obama administration, from the time they've come in, is over 230 years' worth of debt, and he's topped it. He's doubled it in a course of almost eight years, seven-and-a-half years, to be semi- exact.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Money, People, Time, Country

“On one level, then, Cadbury can be seen as a classic example of Victorian industrial paternalism, albeit carried to greater lengths than in most other companies of the day. On another level, however, the Cadbury system resulted in a very strong, highly flexible organisation which, thanks to the strong levels of employee commitment and participation, could draw on a large bank of experience and intelligence to solve problems and undertake what amounted to continuous improvement. The employee participation system in particular meant that Cadbury was constantly upgrading its processes and products. Herbert Casson regarded Cadbury in the 1920s as one of the best-run companies in Britain, if not the world, and summed up the key to its success very succinctly: ‘At Cadbury, everybody thinks.”

Edward Cadbury (1873–1948) British businessman

Morgen Witzel (2003), Fifty Key Figures in Management. p. 39
Quote on the Cadbury company at the time Edward Cadbury was managing director

World, Intelligence, Problem, Thinking

“When debtors once have borrowed all we have to lend, they are very apt to grow shy of their creditors' company.”

John Vanbrugh The Provoked Wife

The Provoked Wife (1698)

“I think of the classical world as a cancer patient or an AIDS patient. You know you have a limited life span. The question you now might want to ask is what would be the most important things to do now with your remaining years. I would like to think that that type of prioritizing could happen with museums, symphony orchestras, opera companies. Things really are urgent right now, and what we're doing somehow has to matter, has to make a contribution.”

Peter Sellars (1957) American theatre director

Source: Mark Swed, "For L.A., History's Knocking", Los Angeles Times, December 26, 1996

Life, World, Question, Thinking

“If this government wants to be fair dinkum, then it must stop kowtowing to financial markets, international organisations, world bankers, investment companies and big business people. The Howard government must become visionary and be prepared to act, even at the risk of making mistakes.”

Pauline Hanson (1954) Australian politician

Maiden Speech (1996)

People, World, Business

“It is easier to point fingers than to accept responsibilities. People complain about elected officials but they do not care to vote. They criticize some multinational corporations but their banks and 401K are profiting from the stocks of those companies.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

People

“It was the sort of day when people walk in the park and solve problems. "We'll simply call the taxi company, David, and request a large one, like one of those vans." Is the sort of thing you would overhear if you were overhearing in the park.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Naturally

People, Problem

“Let's get back to what I regard as a fundamental issue here. I know it’s politically unpopular, politically incorrect. I know it goes against all of the populist indignation that’s out there right now. But you can’t really, it seems to me, expect that these Wall Street companies are going to be run well by a bunch of people who don’t make more than $250,000.”

Mark Haines (1946–2011) American journalist and television show presenter

CNBC, 2009-03-19
Explaining why Wall Street executives at companies that are involved in the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 should not be removed or their compensation reduced, in response to the AIG bonus payments controversy.

People