Executives Quotes - Page 29

• I think there's a possibility that comic book movies are getting a tiny bit better on the one hand because they're no longer made by executives, who are, you know, ninety-year-old bald tailors with cigars, going, 'The kids love this!'

  Joss Whedon

  Book, Kids, Thinking

  "Interview: Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon". Interview with Lev Grossman, content.time.com. September 25, 2005.

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• Most executives I know are so action-oriented, or action-addicted, that time for reflection is the first casualty of their success.

  Margaret Heffernan

  Reflection, Firsts, Action

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• In reality, quitting Facebook is much more problematic than the company's executives suggest, if only because users cannot extract all the intangible social capital they have generated on the site and export it elsewhere.

  Evgeny Morozov

  Reality, Quitting, Social

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• Anyway -- because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next -- and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis -- at any time of night or day.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Philosophy, Communication, Night

  Kurt Vonnegut (2010). “Palm Sunday”, p.132, Random House

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• Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure.Ours is an entertainment seeking-nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one....This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype- the overstressed executive who goes on vacation, but who cannot relax.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Vacation, Pleasure Seeking, Relax

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• A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

  Aldous Huxley

  Powerful, Army, Brave New World

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

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• The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

  James Madison

  Government, Hands, Independent Judiciary

  The Federalist no. 47 (1788)

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• The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.

  Winston Churchill

  Men, Law, Liberty

  Winston Churchill (1952). “The Second World War”

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• I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

  Carl Sandburg

  Children, Beer, Sunday

  Carl Sandburg, (2013). “Chicago Poems”, p.27, Read Books Ltd

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• They were...well, Beautiful People! - not 'students', 'clerks', 'salesgirls', 'executive trainees' - Christ, don't give me your occupation-game labels! We are Beautiful People, ascendant from your robot junkyard.

  Tom Wolfe

  Beautiful, Games, People

  Tom Wolfe (2008). “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, p.155, Macmillan

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• All I wanted and all Neal wanted and all anybody wanted was some kind of penetration into the heart of things where, like in a womb, we could curl up and sleep the ecstatic sleep that Burroughs was experiencing with a good big mainline shot of M. and advertising executives in NY were experiencing with twelve Scotch & Sodas in Stouffers before they made the drunkard's train to Westchester---but without hangovers.

  Jack Kerouac

  Hangover, Heart, Sleep

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• As I understand it, a born executive is a guy who, when anything difficult or unexpected happens, yells for somebody to come and help him.

  Rex Stout

  Guy, Helping, Unexpected

  Rex Stout (2011). “The Red Box”, p.252, Crimeline

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• We can say without exaggeration that the present national ambition of the United States is unemployment. People live for quitting time, for weekends, for vacations, and for retirement; moreover, this ambition seems to be classless, as true in the executive suites as on the assembly lines. One works not because the work is necessary, valuable, useful to a desirable end, or because one loves to do it, but only to be able to quit - a condition that a saner time would regard as infernal, a condemnation.

  Wendell Berry

  Retirement, Ambition, Weekend

  Wendell Berry (2009). “Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food”, p.36, Counterpoint Press

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• Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

  Michael Palin

  Lying, Government, Holy Grail

  "Fictional character: Dennis". "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", 1975.

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• I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard you would become rich. The meaning of that was if you were poor it was because you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew this was a lite, about my father and millions of others, men and women who worked harder than anyone, harder than financiers and politicians, harder than anybody if you accept that when you work at an unpleasant job that makes it very hard work indeed.

  Howard Zinn

  Jobs, Father, Hard Work

  "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times". Book by Howard Zinn, 1994.

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• Law itself is either suspended, or regarded as an instrument that the state may use in the service of constraining and monitoring a given population; the state is not subject to the rule of law, but law can be suspended or deployed tactically and partially to suit the requirements of a state that seeks more and more to allocate sovereign power to its executive and administrative powers. The law is suspended in the name of "sovereignty" of the nation, where "sovereignty" denotes the task of any state to preserve and protect its own territoriality.

  Judith Butler

  Law, Names, Population

  Judith Butler (2006). “Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence”, p.55, Verso

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• Corporations are legal fictions created by the State to shield executives from liability… It’s like if I had a little hand-puppet, and I went to rob a bank, and the hand-puppet held the little gun and told people to hand over all the money, and then the hand-puppet grabbed the money and ran out, and then I got caught and I handed the hand-puppet over the police and then the police tried the hand-puppet, put the hand-puppet in jail, and I get to keep all the money.

  Stefan Molyneux

  Gun, Hands, Jail

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• Everything requires time. It is the only truly universal condition. All work takes place in time and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable, and necessary resource. Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.

  Peter Drucker

  Time, Unique, People

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• An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn't have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.

  Jack Welch

  Inspirational, Business, People

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• No executive has ever suffered because his subordinates were strong and effective.

  Peter Drucker

  Inspirational, Leadership, Strong

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• The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass. She therefore makes sure she puts into the leadership position, into the standard-setting, the performance-making position the person who has the strength to do the outstanding pacesetting job. This always requires focus on the one strength of a person and dismissal of weaknesses as irrelevant unless they hamper the full deployment of the available strength.

  Peter Drucker

  Leadership, Jobs, Focus

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• This industry should behave like a mother whose child has just run out in front of a car. But instead of clasping the child to them, they start punishing the child. Like you don't dare get a cold. How dare you get a cold! I mean, the executives can get colds and stay home forever and phone it in, but how dare you, the actor, get a cold or a virus. You know, no one feels worse than the one who's sick. I sometimes wish, gee, I wish they had to act a comedy with a temperature and a virus infection.

  Marilyn Monroe

  Mother, Running, Children

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• In short, it's a great economy if you're a high-level corporate executive or someone who owns a lot of stock. For most other Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.

  Paul Krugman

  Sports, Growth, Levels

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• Teams are successful when they are focused, have a short cycle time, and are supported by the executives.

  Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr.

  Teamwork, Educational, Successful

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• In an organization of any significant size, the executives cannot create the future single-handedly. They must develop the enterprise in a constellation of teams within the overall team if they hope to bring the special talents and resources to bear on the challenge of creating superior customer value and sustaining a competitive advantage in the eyes of its customers.

  Karl Albrecht

  Team, Eye, Organization

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