Bethune Quotes & Sayings

You have to begin to put the infrastructure in place to put in high-speed trains ... It should be a national priority. If the French can do it, why cant we? — Gordon Bethune

Watches are the only jewelry men can wear, unless you're Mr. T. — Gordon Bethune

What you measure and reward is what you're going to get. — Gordon Bethune

Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a diamond in the rough. — Mary McLeod Bethune

The whole world opened to me when I learned to read. — Mary McLeod Bethune

World peace and brotherhood are based on a common understanding of the contributions and cultures of all races and creeds — Mary McLeod Bethune

You white folks have long been eating the white meat of the chicken. We Negroes are now ready for some of the white meat instead of the dark meat. — Mary McLeod Bethune

I thought, maybe the difference between white folks and colored is just this matter of reading and writing. I made up my mind I would know my letters. — Mary McLeod Bethune

If you say three things in a row that make sense, people will vote for you. — Gordon Bethune

It had been easy to decide in favor of love on Bethune Street, in favor of walking proud and naked on the grass rug of an apartment that caught the morning sun among its makeshift chairs, its French travel posters and its bookcase made of packing-crate slats - an apartment where half the fun of having an affair was that it was just like being married, and where later, after a trip to City Hall and back, after a ceremonial collecting of the other two keys from the other two men, half the fun of being married was that it was just like having an affair. She'd decided in favor of that, all right. — Richard Yates

The progress of the world will call for the best that all of us have to give. — Mary McLeod Bethune

Most businesses fail because they want the right things but measure the wrong things, and they get the wrong results. — Gordon Bethune

Greatness is largely a social accident, and almost always socially supported. — Mary McLeod Bethune

It's difficult to have everybody like everything you do. I don't know anybody that's perfect and doesn't have a zit somewhere. — Gordon Bethune

You don't lie to your own doctor. You don't lie to your own attorney, and you don't lie to your employees. — Gordon Bethune

Education is the great American adventure, the world's most colossal democratic experiment. — Mary McLeod Bethune

Whatever glory belongs to the race for a development unprecedented in history for the given length of time, a full share belongs to the womanhood of the race. — Mary McLeod Bethune

There is a place in God's sun for the youth "farthest down" who has the vision, the determination, and the courage to reach it. — Mary McLeod Bethune

The drums of Africa still beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to prove his worth. — Mary McLeod Bethune

We're a stupid industry led by stupid people, — Gordon Bethune

No one is going to stick their head out of the trenches for someone they don't respect or trust. You can get shot doing that. — Gordon Bethune

I plunged into the job of creating something from nothing ... Though I hadn't a penny left, I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a living God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve. — Mary McLeod Bethune

We have a powerful potential in out youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends. — Mary McLeod Bethune

It all sounds almost silly, but the fact is that the only way to change a corporate culture is to just change it. — Gordon Bethune

The English take their pleasures sadly, after the fashion of their country. — Maximilien De Bethune, Duke Of Sully

Cease to be a drudge. Seek to be an artist. — Mary McLeod Bethune

without awareness that all belong to the one human race, man is but a wolf to man. This — Pierre-Francois De Bethune

An HBCU that is not inherently revolutionary is irrelevant. — Darnell Lamont Walker

Never forget: Businesses are run by people; businesses are made up of people. So at the root of whatever problems you have in your business, you'll find people. — Gordon Bethune

My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Henry Armstrong. — Langston Hughes

He who would rise like Thee, like Thee must owe His glory only to his stooping low. - Bethune. — Lillian G. Harvey

Do you know how much faster I can fix an airplane when I want to fix it than when I don't want to fix it? — Gordon Bethune

We live in a world which respects power above all things. Power, intelligently directed, can lead to more freedom. Unwisely directed, it can be a dreadful, destructive force. — Mary McLeod Bethune

The airline business is the biggest team sport in the world. When you're all consumed with fighting among yourselves, your opponents can run over you every day. — Gordon Bethune

Our children must never lose their zeal for
building a better world. — Mary McLeod Bethune

I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you a respect for the use of power. I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity. I leave you a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow men. I leave you finally, a responsibility to our young people. — Mary McLeod Bethune

For I am my mother's daughter, and ... — Mary McLeod Bethune

In airplanes you have a choice between chocolate and vanilla. One year could be vanilla or it could be chocolate. I don't attach any relevance to which one. — Gordon Bethune

I don't think JetBlue has a better chance of being profitable than 100 other predecessors with new airplanes, new employees, low fares, all touchy-feely ... all of them are losers. Most of these guys are smoking ragweed. — Gordon Bethune

The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arouse the sleeper, to shake the complacent pillars of the world.In a world terrified of change, he preaches revolution-the principle of life. He is an agitator, a disturber of the peace-quick, impatient, positive, restless and disquieting. He is the creative spirit of life working in the the soul of man. — Norman Bethune

It's the old adage: You can make a pizza so cheap, nobody will eat it. You can make an airline so cheap, nobody will fly it. — Gordon Bethune

You're only as good as your dumbest competitor. — Gordon Bethune

I've spent my life as an airplane mechanic, pilot, aircraft manufacturer and airline CEO who never lost a life or an airplane. I am considerate of the risk we take every time we fly. I also know we need to fly and always to improve safety. — Gordon Bethune

The guy in the airplane goes with you. So he has self-interest to do the good things, too, and I don't know of any pilots that don't have a self-interest in staying alive. — Gordon Bethune

Grounding airplanes to cover your butt would never have let Orville or Wilbur change the world. We would still be spending weeks to cross the Atlantic to do business in London. — Gordon Bethune

I never stop to plan. I take things step by step. — Mary McLeod Bethune

For I am my mother's daughter, and the drums of Africa still beat in my heart. — Mary McLeod Bethune

Every pilot thinks they're the best pilot in the world. I think I'm the best pilot. — Gordon Bethune

Charity should be abolished; and be replaced by justice. — Norman Bethune

There is no economy without airlines. Airfreight runs the world. There is no Honolulu without an airplane. This is a very complex system. If you take it down, you can't build it back up overnight. — Gordon Bethune

In each experience of my life, I have had to step out of one little space of the known light, into a large area of darkness. I had to stand awhile in the darkness, and then gradually God has given me light. But not to linger in. For as soon as that light has felt familiar, then the call has always come to step out ahead again into new darkness. — Mary McLeod Bethune

To those of you with your years of service still ahead, the challenge is yours. Stop doubting yourselves. Have the courage to make up your minds and hold your decisions. Refuse to be BOUGHT for a nickel, or a million dollars, or a job! — Mary McLeod Bethune

It's like telling Mozart that there are too many notes in an opera. Which one do you want us to take out? — Gordon Bethune

A woman is free if she lives by her own standards and creates her own destiny, if she prizes her individuality and puts no boundaries on her hopes for tomorrow. — Mary McLeod Bethune

Studying goes deeper than mere reading. There are surface nuggets to be gathered but the best of the gold is underneath, and it takes time and labor to secure it. — Mary McLeod Bethune

A bankruptcy judge can fix your balance sheet, but he cannot fix your company. — Gordon Bethune

Forgiving is not about forgetting, it's letting go of the hurt — Mary McLeod Bethune

Enter to learn; depart to serve. — Mary McLeod Bethune

I have had more than half a century of such happiness. A great deal of worry and sorrow, too, but never a worry or a sorrow that was not offset by a purple iris, a lark, a bluebird, or a dewy morning glory. — Mary McLeod Bethune

But I like to think that a lot of managers and executives trying to solve problems miss the forest for the trees by forgetting to look at their people
not at how much more they can get from their people or how they can more effectively manage their people. I think they need to look a little more closely at what it's like for their people to come to work there every day. — Gordon Bethune

It's not a testosterone-driven industry any longer. Success is making money, not in the size of the airline. — Gordon Bethune

Bethune was a communist and an atheist with a healthy contempt for his evangelical father. — Larry Hannant

[To the patronizing train conductor who had twice said, 'Auntie, give me your ticket':] Which of my sister's sons are you? — Mary McLeod Bethune

The English have a heavy hearted way of amusing themselves. — Maximilien De Bethune, Duke Of Sully

Since 1978 the record pretty well shows that no start-up airline ... has really been successful, so the odds of JetBlue having long-term success are remote. I'm not going to say it can't happen because stranger things have happened, but I personally believe P.T. Barnum was, in that respect, correct. — Gordon Bethune

If we have the courage and tenacity of our forebears, who stood firmly like a rock against the lash of slavery, we shall find a way to do for our day what they did for theirs. — Mary McLeod Bethune

It really helps to know what success is before you get there, and if you know, then you can head right for it. For some people, it's the most money. For some, it's the most power. For some, it's the most girlfriends. Everybody's got a measure. For me, I guess it's having the respect and admiration of your peers. — Gordon Bethune

We tax air passengers like cigarettes and alcohol - we impose sin taxes on travellers. — Gordon Bethune

I was a mechanic in the Navy. And mechanics in the Navy are like mechanics in airlines. You may have more stripes than I do, but you don't know how to fix the airplane. — Gordon Bethune

Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth living. — Mary McLeod Bethune

There is no name so sweet on earth,
no name so sweet in heaven,
The name, before His wondrous birth,
to Christ the Savior given. — George Washington Bethune

What does the Negro want? His answer is very simple. He wants only what all other Americans want. He wants opportunity to make real what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights say, what the Four Freedoms establish. While he knows these ideals are open to no man completely, he wants only his equal chance to obtain them. — Mary McLeod Bethune

If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of discrimination or slander. — Mary McLeod Bethune

Whether I'm at the hangar or at the airport or on an airplane, I get respect. And that's the best part of my day. — Gordon Bethune

Medicine, as we are practising it, is a luxury trade. We are selling bread at the price of jewels ... Let us take the profit, the private economic profit, out of medicine, and purify our profession of rapacious individualism ... Let us say to the people not 'How much have you got?' but 'How best can we serve you? — Norman Bethune

When you actually take the time to go over to somebody's office and personally thank them - whether their office is in a cockpit of an airplane, or in a break room - that's an actual manifestation of interest in them. You need to take the time to show the people around you who work for you that you're interested in them. — Gordon Bethune

Eleanor Roosevelt fights for an anti-lynch law with the NAACP, with Walter White and Mary McLeod Bethune. And she begs FDR to say one word, say one word to prevent a filibuster or to end a filibuster. From '34 to '35 to '36 to '37 to '38, it comes up again and again, and FDR doesn't say one word. And the correspondence between them that we have, I mean, she says, "I cannot believe you're not going to say one word." And she writes to Walter White, "I've asked FDR to say one word. Perhaps he will." But he doesn't. And these become very bitter disagreements. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

The substitute for knowledge is money. — Gordon Bethune

The point is ... you'd better figure out what your Customers - the Customers you want - value. Because that's what they'll buy. Anything else is a waste of their money, and they'll figure that out in a hurry. — Gordon Bethune

Without faith nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible. — Mary McLeod Bethune

The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood. — Mary McLeod Bethune

From the first, I made my learning, what little it was, useful every way I could. — Mary McLeod Bethune

I do feel, in my dreamings and yearnings, so undiscovered by those who are able to help me. — Mary McLeod Bethune

Whatever the white man has done, we have done, and often better. — Mary McLeod Bethune

Knowledge is the prime need of the hour. — Mary McLeod Bethune

It's not about market share. If you have a successful company, you will get your market share. But to get a successful company, what do you have to have? The same metrics of success that your customer does. — Gordon Bethune

Believe in yourself, learn, and never stop wanting to build a better world. — Mary McLeod Bethune

I learned that you can be successful if you get people to help you become successful. — Gordon Bethune

Pete Bethune is a hero in New Zealand. He's a hero worldwide to people who want to see the end of whaling. — Paul Watson

I just want to be able to get on an airplane and enjoy myself in Disneyland, not sit there worrying about all these assassins. — Gordon Bethune

Somebody who knows what they're doing, who has a good track record, they come across as very articulate, bright and looking for a challenge - that's absolutely my kind of hire. — Gordon Bethune