Top Down Quotes

• The test of success is not what you do when you are on top. Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

  George S. Patton

  Life, Motivational, Success

  110 Copy quote

• Change from the top down happens at the will and whim of those below.

  Peter Block

  Leadership, Whim, Happens

  Peter Block (2016). “The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at Work”, p.63, John Wiley & Sons

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• Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

  George S. Patton

  Inspirational, Positive, Success

  52 Copy quote

• We worry top-down, but we invest bottom-up

  Seth Klarman

  Worry, Bottom

  12 Copy quote

• There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.

  George S. Patton

  Loyalty, Army, Men

  "War As I Knew It". Book by George S. Patton, 1947.

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• I have seen life from the top down and the bottom up.
  I know how it looks both ways. And I know there is wisdom and that there is hope.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Looks, Down And, Way

  L. Ron Hubbard (2007). “Scientology: A New Slant on Life”, p.270, Bridge Publications, Inc.

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• Communication can't always follow the top-down model. With the fluidity of information in business today, leaders need to be masterful listeners; they need to be able to receive as well as send.

  Joseph Badaracco

  Communication, Leader, Needs

  59 Copy quote

• Top-down leaders, by withholding power from those in the ranks, deprive them of the ability to use the expertise and information vested in them to respond directly and with speed to customer concerns.

  Sally Helgesen

  Leadership, Use, Information

  8 Copy quote

• Top-down authority structures turn employees into bootlickers, breed pointless struggles for political advantage, and discourage dissent.

  Gary Hamel

  Struggle, Political, Authority

  8 Copy quote

• Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.

  Yogi Berra

  God, Stupidity, Firsts

  5 Copy quote

• If there is to be an ecologically sound society, it will have to come the grass roots up, not from the top down.

  Paul Hawken

  Inspirational, Nature, Roots

  7 Copy quote

• Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up.

  Philip Yancey

  Goodness, Grows, Bottom

  Philip Yancey (1995). “The Jesus I Never Knew”, p.76, Harper Collins

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• Top-down approaches do not work. The bottleneck is at the top of the bottle.

  Iqbal Quadir

  Freedom, Bottles, Approach

  10 Copy quote

• I don't do a lot of top-down teaching.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teaching

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

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• The revolution here is from hierarchical to lateral power. That's the power shift. So increasingly a younger generation that's grown up on the internet and now increasingly distributing renewable energies, they're measuring politics in terms of a struggle between centralized, hierarchical, top-down and closed and proprietary, versus distributed, open, collaborative, transparent. This shift, from hierarchical to lateral power, is going to change the way we live, the way we educate our children, and the way we govern the world.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Love, Children, Struggle

  16 Copy quote

• Unlike solidarity, which is horizontal and takes place between equals, charity is top-down, humiliating those who receive it and never challenging the implicit power relations.

  Eduardo Galeano

  Challenges, Charity, Relation

  "Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking Glass World". Book by Eduardo Galeano, 2000.

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• It is a lesson of the sixties: liberals get in the biggest political trouble - whether instituting open housing, civilian compliant review boards, or sex education programs - when they presume that a reform is an inevitable comcomitant of progress. It is then they are most likely to establish their reforms by top-down bureaucratic means. A blindsiding backlash often ensues.

  Rick Perlstein

  Sex, Mean, Political

  4 Copy quote

• I hate intellectuals. They are from the top down. I am from the bottom up.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Hate, Intelligent, Intelligence

  41 Copy quote

• I don't think top-down works in America.

  Donald Trump

  Thinking, America

  Source: time.com

  7 Copy quote

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• I paint from the top down. From the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the houses, then the cattle, and then the people.

  Grandma Moses

  Sky, People, House

  Tampa Bay Magazine, p. 205, January/February 2008.

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• In the larger companies, you have this tendency to get top-down direction.

  Vinton Cerf

  Tendencies, Company

  4 Copy quote

• It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years?... What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.

  Virginia Woolf

  Hero, Men, Thinking

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1012, Delphi Classics

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• To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese.

  Tom Robbins

  Laughter, Rain, Ignorance

  7 Copy quote

• Rather than double-down on the top-down economics that let a fortunate few play by their own rules, let’s embrace an economic patriotism that says we rise or fall together, as one nation, and as one people.

  Barack Obama

  Fall, Play, People

  "Ex-Senators Paid To Help Multibillion-Dollar Company Evade Corporate Income Taxes" By Shadee Ashtari, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 13, 2014.

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• We can't afford more top-down economics. What we need are policies that will grow and strengthen the middle class.

  Barack Obama

  Class, Needs, Economics

  5 Copy quote