Quotes about management
page 13

Jack McDevitt photo

“And because she so desperately wanted it to be true, she knew she could not manage an objective judgment.”

Source: Time Travelers Never Die (2009), Chapter 19 (p. 195)

Margaret Cho photo

“[ Management can be defined as] the function of getting things done through others.”

Cyril J. O'Donnell (1900–1976) American professor

Harold Koontz and Cyril O’Donnell (1955), Principles of Management: An Analysis of Managerial Functions. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955, p. 3; As cited in Wren & Bedeian (2009;411)

Linda McQuaig photo
Pushyamitra Shunga photo

“Even a very general knowledge of Indian history already shows that any instances of Hindu persecution of Buddhism could never have been more than marginal. After fully seventeen centuries of Buddhism's existence, from the 6 th century BC to the late 12 th century AD, most of it under the rule of Hindu kings, we find Buddhist establishments flourishing all over India. Under king Pushyamitra Shunga, often falsely labelled as a persecutor of Buddhism, important Buddhist centres such as the Sanchi stupa were built. As late as the early 12 th century, the Buddhist monastery Dharmachakrajina Vihara at Sarnath was built under the patronage of queen Kumaradevi, wife of Govindachandra, the Hindu king of Kanauj in whose reign the contentious Rama temple in Ayodhya was built. This may be contrasted with the ruined state of Buddhism in countries like Afghanistan or Uzbekistan after one thousand or even one hundred years of Muslim rule. Indeed, the Muslim chroniclers themselves have described in gleeful detail how they destroyed Buddhism root and branch in the entire Gangetic plain in just a few years after Mohammed Ghori's victory in the second battle of Tarain in 1192. The famous university of Nalanda with its fabulous library burned for weeks. Its inmates were put to the sword except for those who managed to flee. The latter spread the word to other Indian regions where Buddhist monks packed up and left in anticipation of further Muslim conquests. It is apparent that this way, some abandoned Buddhist establishments were taken over by Hindus; but that is an entirely different matter from the forcible occupation or destruction of Buddhist institutions by the foreign invaders.”

Pushyamitra Shunga King of Sunga Dynasty

Koenraad Elst: Religious Cleansing of Hindus, 2004, Agni conference in The Hague, and in: K. Elst The Problem with Secularism, 2007

“In fact, their contempt for the native converts was deeper than that for their Hindu subjects. They had all along looked down upon the native converts as Ajlãf (low-born) and Arzãl (base-born) as compared to the Ashrãf (exalted) which distinctive designation they had reserved for themselves….. It was at this critical juncture that the frustrated fraternity of foreign Muslims took a very strategic step. They started swearing by a solidarity with the native Muslims whom they had despised so far. They let loose on the native Muslims an army of mercenary Mullahs recruited, mostly from their own ranks. These Mullahs went about broadcasting the message that ‘Islam was in danger’, and that ‘Hindus were out to enslave and exploit the Muslim minority’. It was in this manner that the residues of Islamic imperialism managed to ‘merge’ themselves with the native converts, and to present themselves at the head of a strong phalanx pitted against whatever historical forces threatened their unjust privileges. Hitherto, the haughty Ashrãf had stood strictly aloof from the abject Ajlãf and the despised Arzãl. Now all of a sudden the latter became the former’s ‘brothers in faith’. This was a tremendous transformation of the political scene in the second decade of the 20th century. … The British never attached more than a nuisance value to this noisy fraternity which had to be befriended or ignored according to the needs of British policy at any time. It was the national leadership which was impressed by this mobilisation of the ‘Muslim masses’ and the pathos of ‘Muslim plight’. They accepted not only separate electorates but also weightages for the ‘Muslim minority’ in many provinces.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Hilaire Belloc photo

“[M]an knows his own nature, and that which he pursues must surely be his satisfaction? Judging by which measure I determine that the best thing in the world is flying at full speed from pursuit, and keeping up hammer and thud and gasp and bleeding till the knees fail and the head grows dizzy, and at last we all fall down and that thing (whatever it is) which pursues us catches us up and eats our carcasses. This way of managing our lives, I think, must be the best thing in the world—for nearly all men choose to live thus.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

The "thing" which pursues us, we subsequently learn, is either "a Money-Devil" or "some appetite or lust" and "the advice is given to all in youth that they must make up their minds which of the two sorts of exercise they would choose, and the first [i.e. pursuit by a Money-Devil] is commonly praised and thought worthy; the second blamed." (p. 32)
Source: The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), pp. 31–2

John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The Sydney Morning Herald (22 May 1982), as cited in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993), edited by Robert Andrews, p. 972

Hillary Clinton photo

“Trump likes to say he only hires the "best people." But he’s had to fire so many campaign managers it’s like an episode of the Apprentice.”

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

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in (August 25, 2016)

Dmitri Bulykin photo

“Bulykin usually scores in April." - (Aleksandr Borodyuk, Russia national team manager)”

Dmitri Bulykin (1979) Russian association football player

Бородюк: хорошо, что весной у нас есть искусственные газоны http://www.rol.ru/news/sport/news/06/05/05_049.htm

George Dantzig photo
Daniel McCallum photo
W. Edwards Deming photo

“I think that people here expect miracles. American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan—but they don't know what to copy!”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

If Japan Can...Why Can't We? (1980)

Louis Brownlow photo
Johnny Marr photo
V. P. Singh photo
W. Edwards Deming photo
Susie Bright photo
Friedrich Hayek photo
Ben Horowitz photo

“By far the most difficult skill I learned as a C. E. O. was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared with keeping my mind in check.”

Ben Horowitz (1966) American businessman

Ben Horowitz, " What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology http://www.bhorowitz.com/what_s_the_most_difficult_ceo_skill_managing_your_own_psychology," at bhorowitz.com, March 31, 2011.

“I deeply believe that this society has now thrust upon it a kind of moral imperative to focus efforts on the utilization of general systems concepts and conceptualizations by policy-forming executives, administrators, and managers in all kinds of large-scale organizations.”

Richard F. Ericson (1919–1993) American academic

Ericson (1969) cited in: Brian R. Gaines Ed. "General systems research: quo vadis?" http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~gaines/reports/SYS/GS79/GS79.pdf in: General Systems: Yearbook of the Society for General Systems Research, Vol.24, 1979, pp.1-9.

Ausonius photo
Colin Powell photo

“The United Nations will spearhead our efforts to manage the new conflicts (that afflict our world)…. Yes the principles of the United Nations Charter are worth our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

General Colin Powell, 21 April 1993, receiving the UN-USA Global Leadership Award.
1990s

Rob Pike photo
Narendra Modi photo
Margaret Chan photo

“Health systems are social institutions. They do far more for society than deliver babies and pills, like a post office delivering parcels. Properly managed and adequately financed, a fair and equitable health system contributes to social cohesion and stability.”

Margaret Chan (1947) Director-General of the World Health Organization

"Exclusive Interview with WHO's Dr. Margaret Chan" http://www.usaid.gov/news-information/frontlines/global-healthiraq/exclusive-interview-whos-dr-margaret-chan, April-May 2011.

T. B. Joshua photo

“If you have not tasted poverty, you will not be able to manage blessing when it comes. If you have not tasted humiliation, you will not be able to manage honour when it comes.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

In an interview with Tell Magazine, Nigeria, on the reason for his passion for the needy - "The People Come First - TB Joshua" http://www.docstoc.com/docs/10335740/The-People-Come-First---TB-Joshua (December 24 2007)

Henry Mintzberg photo
Marcel Duchamp photo
William Kapell photo

“Few artists have ever battled so manfully with management or so unheitatingly sassed the press. He was afraid of nobody because his heart was pure.”

William Kapell (1922–1953) American classical pianist

Virgil Thompson, " On William Kapell http://www.williamkapell.com/articles/virgilthompson.html", New York Herald-Tribune (October, 1953).
About

Mitt Romney photo

“Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

CD-ROM marking 25th anniversary of Bain & Company, quoted in * 2012-09-27
Corn
David
w:David Corn
New Romney Video: In 1985, He Said Bain Would "Harvest" Companies for Profits
Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/1985-romney-bain-harvest-firms-profits-video
2012-10-03
1985

Jerzy Vetulani photo
Richard L. Daft photo
W. Edwards Deming photo
Charles Stross photo
Maria Bamford photo
Smita Nair Jain photo
Amir Taheri photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“I would certainly implement that. Absolutely… There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases. We should have a lot of systems… They have to be. They have to be… It's all about management.”

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

As quoted in "Donald Trump Says He Supports a Database and ID Cards to Track Muslims in the U.S.: 'We're Going to Have to Look at the Mosques'" http://www.people.com/article/donald-trump-muslim-database-syrian-refugees (20 November 2015), by Char Adams, People.
2010s, 2015

Halldór Laxness photo
Alexandros Panagoulis photo

“A match as a pen
Blood on the floor as ink
The forgotten gauze cover as paper
But what should I write?
I might just manage my address.
This ink is strange; it clots.
I write you from a prison
in Greece.”

Alexandros Panagoulis (1939–1976) Greek politician and poet

My Address, written in Military Prisons of Bogiati, 5 June 1971 – After beating.
Poetry, Vi scrivo da un carcere in Grecia (I write you from a prison in Greece) (1974)

Adrian Slywotzky photo

“The new rules of competition require managers to start by asking what's important to their customers and where the company can make new money. Then, they need to reinvent their businesses to create the next profit zones.”

Adrian Slywotzky (1951) American economist

Attributed to Slywotzky and Morrison in: John A. Byrne (1998) " Go where the money is http://www.businessweek.com/1998/04/b3562033.htm" at businessweek.com. Jan. 15, 1998.

William Hazlitt photo

“The great requisite … for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Thought and Action" http://books.google.com/books?id=9NU3AAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+great+requisite%22+%22for+the+prosperous+management+of+ordinary+business+is+the+want+of+imagination%22&pg=PA241#v=onepage
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Igor Ansoff photo
John Maynard Keynes photo
Sally Shlaer photo
Osama bin Laden photo

“What I know is that those who risked their lives to earn the pleasure of God are real men. They managed to rid the Islamic nation of disgrace. We hold them in the highest esteem.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

In response to the interviewer stating: 'Do you know the men who have been arrested for these attacks?'
1990s, Time magazine interview (1998)

A. Wayne Wymore photo

“After earning the PhD degree and acquiring some relatively extensive experience in digital computers… It was time to leave the University. The result of an extensive search for the right job was a family move to Arlington Heights, Illinois, where it was a short commute to the Research Laboratories of the Pure Oil Company at Crystal Lake. I was given the title of Mathematical and Computer Consultant. The Labs were set in a beautiful campus, the professional personnel were eager to learn what I had to teach and to include me in many interesting projects where my knowledge and skills could be put to good use. I was encouraged to initiate my own program of research. I went to work with enthusiasm.
The corporate headquarters of Pure Oil were located in down town Chicago. Pure Oil had been trying to install an IBM 705 computer system for all their accounting needs including calculation of all data necessary for the management of exploration, drilling, refining and distribution of oil products and even royalties to shareholders in oil wells. Typical for those early days, the programming team was in deep difficulties and needed help; they lacked adequate resources and suitable training. The Executive Vice President of Pure Oil, when he heard that there was a computer expert already on the payroll at the Crystal Lake lab, ended our family blissful dream and I was reassigned to the down town office.”

A. Wayne Wymore (1927–2011) American mathematician

Systems Movement: Autobiographical Retrospectives (2004)

Aneurin Bevan photo

“We could manage to survive without money changers and stockbrokers. We should find it harder to do without miners, steel workers and those who cultivate the land.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

In Place of Fear (William Heinemann Ltd, 1952), p. 157
1950s

Frederick Winslow Taylor photo

“Scientific management… has for its very foundation the firm conviction that the true interests of the two are one and the same; that prosperity for the employer cannot exist through a long term of years unless it is accompanied by prosperity for the employe, and vice versa; and that it is possible to give the workman what he most wants high wages and the employer what he wants a low labor cost for his manufactures.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Principles of Scientific Management, 1911, p. 10; As cited in: Frank B. Gilbreth (1912). Primer of scientific management https://archive.org/stream/primerofscientif00gilbrich#page/1/mode/1up, p. 12.

Phil McGraw photo

“Life is managed; it is not cured.”

Phil McGraw (1950) American television host, psychologist, actor and film producer
Michael Lewis photo
Clayton M. Christensen photo
Gustave de Molinari photo

“This option the consumerit could. The present admirable constitution of the courts of justice in England was, perhaps, originally in a great measure, formed by this emulation, which anciently took place between their respective judges; each judge endeavouring to give, in his own court, the speediest and most effectual remedy, which the law would admit, for every sort of injustice. (The Wealth of Nations [New York: Modern Library, 1937]; originally 1776), p. 679--> retains of being able to buy security wherever he pleases brings about a constant emulation among all the producers, each producer striving to maintain or augment his clientele with the attraction of cheapness or of faster, more complete and better justice.If, on the contrary, the consumer is not free to buy security wherever he pleases, you forthwith see open up a large profession dedicated to arbitrariness and bad management. Justice becomes slow and costly, the police vexatious, individual liberty is no longer respected, the price of security is abusively inflated and inequitably apportioned, according to the power and influence of this or that class of consumers. The protectors engage in bitter struggles to wrest customers from one another. In a word, all the abuses inherent in monopoly or in communism crop up.”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 57-59

Akio Morita photo
William H. McNeill photo
Larry Wall photo

“The only reason I've managed to run this open source project, is that I have learned to delegate even the delegation to other people.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

final words of the video
Public Talks, Larry Wall Speaks at Google (2008)

Russell L. Ackoff photo

“Managers cannot learn from doing things right, only from doing them wrong”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 2000s, A little book of f-laws: 13 common sins of management, 2006, p. 37 cited in: Andrew Carey (2008) Inside Project Red Stripe: Incubating Innovation and Teamwork at the Economist. p. 49.

Stanley Baldwin photo
Fred Rogers photo
Daniel Goleman photo
Dorothy Parker photo

“The management’s method of procedure is evidently to hire some well-known man to write the book, and then, as soon as it is written, to give it away to some deserving family, and go out and engage an assortment of specialty acts. p. 151”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 3: 1920

“I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote Search. There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove. I went out and talked to genuinely smart, remarkably interesting, first-rate people. I had an infinite travel budget that allowed me to fly first class and stay at top-notch hotels and a license from McKinsey to talk to as many cool people as I could all around the United States and the world.
I went to see Karl Weick, who had totally influenced my life. I had read his work a thousand times, and I'd never met him. I went to Oslo to talk with Einar Thorsrud, who had studied empowerment on oil tankers. I went to the Tavistock Institute in London, where the leading thinkers on organizational development were looking at why people work together effectively in team configurations under certain circumstances.
Word of the meeting got back to McKinsey USA, and I was invited to give a presentation to the top management of PepsiCo… The time was drawing near for the Pepsi presentation to take place. One morning at about 6, I sat down at my desk overlooking the San Francisco Bay from the 48th floor of the Bank of America Tower, and I closed my eyes. Then I leaned forward, and I wrote down eight things on a pad of paper. Those eight things haven't changed since that moment. They were the eight basic principles of Search.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Tom Peters (2001) "Tom Peters's True Confessions" in Fast Company, December 2001 ( online http://www.fastcompany.com/44077/tom-peterss-true-confessions, Nov 31, 2001).

Anu Partanen photo
Indra Nooyi photo

“Our hope is that whosoever is in power, manages this country consistently for all the potential the country has.”

Indra Nooyi (1955) Indian-born, naturalized American, business executive

Narendra Modi question elicits 'no comment' from PepsiCo chief Indra Nooyi

Rupert Boneham photo
Erving Goffman photo
Nick Hornby photo
Max Schmeling photo

“I received a letter from the Reich Ministry of Sports. They want me to split from Joe Jacobs, my manager since 1928…. I really need Joe Jacobs. I owe all my success in America to him.”

Max Schmeling (1905–2005) German boxer

To Adolf Hitler, 1935 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/fight/peopleevents/p_jacobs.html

Maimónides photo
W. Edwards Deming photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Melanie Phillips photo
John P. Kotter photo
Mitt Romney photo