Chief Executives Quotes

• I don't want to be a great chief executive without being a great mum and a great wife.

  Angela Ahrendts

  Wife, Want, Chiefs

  "Why women over 50 should be listened to....in all walks of life" by Alison Phillips, www.mirror.co.uk. September 11, 2013.

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• Businessmen... were not born chief executives. They were often people first.

  Richard Jefferson

  People, Firsts, Born

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• Don't blame the marketing department. The buck stops with the chief executive.

  John D. Rockefeller

  Responsibility, Marketing, Bucks

  John D. Rockefeller (2015). “John D. Rockefeller on Making Money: Advice and Words of Wisdom on Building and Sharing Wealth”, p.7, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Ethics must begin at the top of an organization. It is a leadership issue and the chief executive must set the example.

  Edward F. Hennessey

  Issues, Organization, Example

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• The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Business, Awards, Achievement

  Annals of an Abiding Liberal ch. 6 (1979)

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• A market where chief executive officers make 262 times that of the average worker and 821 times that of the minimum-wage worker is not a market that is working well. And it is surely not working well enough to build a solid middle class.

  Marcy Kaptur

  Average, Class, Minimum Wage

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• Chief executives, who themselves own few shares of their companies, have no more feeling for the average stockholder than they do for baboons in Africa.

  T. Boone Pickens

  Average, Feelings, Share

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• I cannot imagine any other country in the world where the opposition would seek, and the chief executive would allow, the dissemination of his most private and personal conversations with his staff, which, to be honest, do not exactly confer sainthood on anyone concerned.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Country, Sainthood, World

  Gerald R. Ford's speech to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as quoted in "The New York Times", May 4, 1974.

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• A president who believed that America's greatness is recoverable and expandable - a chief executive determined to lead us back to national restoration - would reject the crippling notions of national impotency that Obama has embraced.

  David Limbaugh

  Greatness, America, President

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• I accept that responsibility and ask only that I be judged by my performance as its chief executive.

  Jane Byrne

  Responsibility, Accepting, Chiefs

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• Business chief executive officers and their boards succumb to the pressures of the financial markets and their fears of takeovers and pour out their energies to produce quarterly earnings - at the expense of building their companies for the long term.

  J. Irwin Miller

  Long, Earning, Pressure

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• Life is very good. I'm the president and Chief Executive Officer of the Wireless trade association, the CTIA.

  Steve Largent

  Sports, President, Association

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• Pro football was taking off when I became commissioner, and when a sport's successful and you're its chief executive officer, much of the credit flows to you and you develop a good track record.

  Pete Rozelle

  Sports, Football, Successful

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• It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training.

  Ulysses S. Grant

  Office, Political, Training

  Eighth State of the Union Address, en.wikisource.org. 1876.

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• It is well to remember that the office of Chief Executive is in part a symbol of the nation and that leaders in a nation may differ in their own house but they have instant solidarity in the presence of foreign attack

  Herbert Hoover

  Office, House, Leader

  United States. President (1929-1933 : Hoover), Herbert Hoover (1974). “Herbert Hoover: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President”

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• [F]or the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey.

  Terry Eagleton

  Soccer, Football, Games

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• I was the chief executive once, I've been there. My recommendation to anybody is don't go backwards.

  Stuart Rose

  Recommendations, Chiefs, Backwards

  "Sir Stuart Rose: 'They say we can't afford to retire, and I don't want to'". Interview with Juliette Garside, www.theguardian.com. April 25, 2012.

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• The reason is still difficult to explain, but it is not complicated. That inner voice that will not be denied, once we learn to listen to it, had whispered since the beginning, "Business is not what your life is about. Founding VISA and being its chief executive officer is something you must do, but it's only preparatory."

  Dee Hock

  Business, Voice, Life Is

  Dee Hock, VISA International (1999). “Birth of the Chaordic Age”, p.16, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

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• The hardest thing for a chief executive to do is to tell someone that they don't have a job anymore.

  Carly Fiorina

  Jobs, Chiefs, Hardest

  "Can Carly Fiorina capitalize on breakout debate performance? Plus, Catholic leaders preview Pope Francis' trip to the US". "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace, www.foxnews.com. September 20, 2015.

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• I received a phone call from the chief executive of my principal sponsor [Marlboro], who actually told me that it would be in the interests of the sport if I started to lose races. Which, I mean, just blew my mind.

  Ron Dennis

  Sports, Mean, Phones

  Source: www.caranddriver.com

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• He was a great president in his first term; in his second term, he wasn't the same Grover Cleveland he was to begin with. ...Cleveland reestablished the presidency by being not only a chief executive but a leader.

  Harry S. Truman

  Leader, President, Firsts

  Harry S. Truman (2015). “Where the Buck Stops: The Personal and Private Writings of Harry S. Truman”, p.21, New Word City

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• I believe that if you go and ask a chief executive of a Goldman Sachs or a BP, and they answer you honestly they want monopolies, they want government subsidies, they want preferences - they're not interested in free markets.

  Ian Bremmer

  Believe, Government, Answers

  "The West Should Fear the Growth of State Capitalism". Interview with James Quinn, www.telegraph.co.uk. July 10, 2010.

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• Last year, the journalist Malcolm Gladwell conducted a survey of chief executive officers of Fortune 500 companies for his book Blink. He discovered that while in the US population 14.5 per cent of all men are 6ft (1.83m) or taller, among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies the proportion is 58 per cent. And while 3.9 per cent of American adults are 6ft 2in or taller, almost a third of the CEOs were that tall.

  Daniel Finkelstein

  Book, Men, Years

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• If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won't go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed. Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

  Mitt Romney

  Goodbye, Jobs, Suicidal

  "Let Detroit go bankrupt". www.nytimes.com. November 18, 2008.

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• We have to separate here the church in its broad sense. We have Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox churches. The Catholic church is a corporation like a chief executive. A fairly homogenous operation. Today its attitude toward anti-Semitism is much more severe than it's ever been. The Catholic Church today is much less the problem than the other groups.

  Manfred Gerstenfeld

  Attitude, Church Today, Catholic

  Source: www.beliefnet.com

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