Quotes & Sayings About Bosses

Bad bosses chew-out in public for the purpose of showing their dominance). — Rory Miller

Twitter is so short, it's safe. I don't want my bosses to be like, 'Hey, your script is due and we saw you wrote four blog pages.' — Mindy Kaling

My advice on getting a raise is what everybody's advice is: to become a confident negotiator; but that is so hard. My admiration for women who are good at that is unbridled. Women in general have a harder time talking about money with their bosses. — Jill Abramson

The bosses of the Democratic party and the bosses of the Republican party alike have a closer grip than ever before on the party machines in the States and in the Nation. This crooked control of both the old parties by the beneficiaries of political and business privilege renders it hopeless to expect any far-reaching and fundamental service from either. — Theodore Roosevelt

Monsters, among other brutes, are the ones without guilt feelings. Perhaps Hitler did not have any, or Himmler, or Stalin. Maybe Mafia bosses do not have any guilt feelings either, or maybe their remains are just well hidden in the cellar. Even aborted guilt feelings ... All men need guilt feelings. — Pope Benedict XVI

Bosses and leaders everywhere should cherish the people who bring them bad news, disappointing data or hard problems. — Margaret Heffernan

I've got an odd, negative bond with C. Montgomery Burns. He reminds a lot of people of bosses they've worked for. He certainly reminds me of someone I'm working for — Harry Shearer

Vinny was flying on Learjets all over the country to gamble. The fact is, Vinny Gorgeous was the mirror image of John Gotti. The two mob bosses were degenerate gamblers. Vinny even got himself barred from Atlantic City. — Dominick Cicale

I was sent to a school with bosses for teachers- no Twain, only cane; check your dick you harry, no Dickens either, No Tom Sawyers no David Copperfields only Webster, master it for grammar, the Wren with a dash of Martini-Drink deep. — Aporva Kala

We can't rely on others to be our teachers anymorethe future belongs to individuals who decide to become great bosses (and teachers). — Seth

I didn't really start building my own stuff until I was 24, 25 or so, and even then, I ran into a lot of resistance from, like, older folks, like my bosses at other companies or people in the industry that were like, 'Oh that's an interesting idea, but it will never work.' And, I don't know, I kind of believed everything that they told me. — Dennis Crowley

As the Batman TV series was returning to ABC for its second season in 1967, the TV bosses decided to take Catwoman into another direction ... lucky for me. — Eartha Kitt

We have to deal with rather than anesthetizing tension with TV or video games. It's easier to bypass relational snags with a convenient distraction, forfeiting the chance to improve problem solving and listening skills. I don't want my kids to be more comfortable interacting with a computer screen than a human being. We stay the course until we've resolved an issue, not allowing "Phineas & Ferb" to fill the space instead. This is harder and requires more time, but my kids will marry people and have bosses and children. Learning healthy relational skills is now or never. — Jen Hatmaker

So in 1924, Eleanor Roosevelt really gets a sense of what the limits of the battle and the contours of the battle are going to be. The men are contemptuous of the women, and the women really need to organize. She writes an article which becomes an article she writes in different ways over and over and over again: Women need to organize. They need to create their own bosses. They need to have support networks and gangs so that they are a force. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

But such people (Moderate Conservatives) aren't liberal. What they are is corporate. Their habits and opinions owe far more to the standards of courtesy and taste that prevail within the white-collar world than they do to Franklin Roosevelt and the United Mine Workers. We live in a time, after all, when hard-nosed bosses compose awestruck disquisitions on the nature of 'change,' punk rockers dispense leadership secrets, shallow profundities about authenticity sell luxury cars, tech billionaires build rock'n'roll musuems, management theorists ponder the nature of coolness, and a former lyricist fro the Grateful Dead hail the dawn of New Economy capitalism from the heights of Davos. Coversvatives may not understand why, but business culture had melded with counterculture for reasons having a great deal to do with business culture's usual priority - profit. — Thomas Frank

You know what I hate about working? Bosses ... The very idea that ANYONE could be my boss, well ... I think you see the conflict. — Bill Hicks

My bosses cautioned me about my candor. Now my GE career is over, and I'm telling you that it was my candor that helped make it work. — Jack Welch

Once the country was settled and built, the bosses changed the order from a stack of educated workers to a barrel of minimum wage lottery dreamers. — Lenny Bruce

We have seen a central government promote the power of labor-union bosses, and in turn be supported by that power, until it has become entirely too much a government of and for one class, which is exactly what our Founding Fathers wanted most to prevent. — Robert W. Welch Jr.

Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements. — Ron Livingston

We are in a movement that must not fade away. The bosses are you. The people in Washington are public servants, and they serve you. — Jeff Sessions

We should remember that it's easier to destroy than to build, and it's really easy to destroy something you have no stake in. It was the 10 percent cut in wages that precipitated The Strike. The Bosses reduced their workers' stake in their operations below the minimum necessary for survival, while denying them any legal recourse. That was when the real Atlas shrugged. — Cecelia Holland

Now, everybody is searching for managers with a little dose of leadership (not too much but it should be clearly there). Some "bosses" say that their employees either have leadership skills or they don't, that this is an innate ability. Others think leadership can be learned and they train their employees through various courses on this topic. The main aspect to observe here is that the majority of employers do not train or want their employees to become "distinct" leaders and follow their path in the world. They want and train them to stay in their company and successfully deliver more to the company. Of course, the rule is validated by exceptions, so there are companies that give birth, from their environment and trainings, to great and very influential leaders. — Elena D. Calin

TCA pretends to be about raising money for charity. That's true, but only so far. If I had not taken time off from the Penn & Teller show to do The Celebrity Apprentice - if Teller and I had just done our show, gotten usual pay - I could have donated four times the amount of money that Trump had pledged to give my charity if I won the whole damn shooting match. Opportunity Village, "my" charity that helps intellectually disabled adults to enter society, got a lot of attention because I was on The Celebrity Apprentice, and that does count for something. And when I was "fired," my real bosses at Caesars, who own the Rio and the Penn & Teller Theater, said, "Oh, you wanted a quarter million for Opportunity Village? We don't have to do some jive TV show; we'll just write a check." They wrote the full winning amount to Opportunity Village and everyone was happy. — Penn Jillette

We blame our bosses, the economy, our politicians, other people, or we write ourselves off as failures or our goals as impossible. When really only one thing is at fault: our attitude and approach. — Ryan Holiday

Ponder had invented a little system he'd called, in the privacy of his head, Lies-to-Wizards. It was for their own good, he told himself. There was no point in telling your bosses everything; they were busy men, they didn't want explanations. There was no point in burdening them. What they wanted was little stories that they felt they could understand, and then they'd go away and stop worrying. — Terry Pratchett

CNN, a part of the Time Warner company, lives for news about everything and anyone. In the office, the bosses openly discuss the need for a diverse staff and diverse stories, and each time we draw new viewers, the effort intensifies. — Soledad O'Brien

Odessa sighed. 'When I said you were one of the smartest people in the company, I was referring solely to your technical abilities. Now get to work. — A. Ashley Straker

The best boss is the one who bosses the least. — Ralph Moody

It takes a lot of work to do this every day, every day, but I feel, as a sheriff, I should get to know my people. I serve them. They don't serve me. I serve them. They're my bosses, and the more people I can see and talk to, I love it. — Joe Arpaio

Bosses will tell you they are looking for something different but they're not, actually. — Ian McShane

I love Greg," said one of his bosses at Deutsche Bank. "I have nothing bad to say about him except that he's a fucking whack job. — Michael Lewis

Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream, it takes over as the number one hormone; it bosses the enzymes; directs the pineal gland; plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to film is more film. — Frank Capra

It is a common on occurrence to see a Negro well situated as a minister or teacher aspiring to a political appointment which temporarily pays little more than what he is receiving and offers no distinction except that of being earmarked as a Jim Crow job set aside for some Negro who has served well the purposes of the bosses as a wardheeler in a campaign. — Carter G. Woodson

Even the most high-maintenance boss isn't going to sit and watch you the whole time, making sure you're paying attention to them, whereas with a child, it's like, 'Wait, what? You're not watching me right now? Really? Then I'm going to go spill this milk.' Even bosses from hell don't behave like that! — Ivanka Trump

The real bosses in the capitalist system of market economy are the consumers. They by their buying and by their abstention from buying decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men poor. They are no easy bosses. — Ludwig Von Mises

Before I started a company, I was an employee with a bad attitude. I was always felt like, bosses are stupid, and people weren't well treated. — Mitch Kapor

What I try to keep an eye on is I don't work for the party bosses in Washington. I work for 26 million Texans. — Ted Cruz

I don't have any special passion for politics, it being a never-ending merry-go-round of bosses big and small, all generally mediocre. I actually find it boring. — Elena Ferrante

Given the consumer-pleasing politics of today's universities, I have, in effect, seventy new bosses each semester; they're sitting at the desk in front of me. — Maureen Corrigan

I'm single, I'm enjoying life. Being a boss. Like all true bosses, one day you gotta give it up. — Rick Ross

My dad came out of the Roosevelt era and the Depression. One person and one party made a difference in his life. That's what everybody forgot when they called my father and other people political bosses. — Richard M. Daley

Some bosses are so greedy (for themselves only) they forget underlings are not thirteenth-century peasants who can be satisfied with a glass of mead and three festivals a year. — Helen Gurley Brown

Having to be somewhere at a specific time and performing according to others' expectations can put pressure on them and create a paralysis of will. Because many people with AS are highly intelligent, they may have a hard time with teachers that are not up to par in their eyes, and bosses that don't run things as well as they could. If they don't quit because of any of the above, the know-it-all nature of an intelligent Aspie has been known to upset a few bosses here and there, causing termination of employment. As a result, many have gone through a series of jobs and have had unsatisfactory experiences which get more discouraging as the years pass. — Rudy Simone

Any idiot can point out a problem. So, bosses do. — Gerry Geek

How's your first week so far?" Isabele asks.
"Well, let me see," I begin. "Chloe says my penmanship is shit, and I was only thirty minutes early this morning, which apparently means I'm late, but on the bright side, she thinks her non-fat, half-sweet, no-whip soy latte didn't taste right and then she told me she's not paying for it. Other than that, work is just fine. — Maria Malonzo

We get through life and this is part of the education process also. In real life, we meet bad bosses and good bosses and good friends and bad friends. I think we should let the teachers do their work and not impose too much stuff on them. — Philippe Falardeau

My only goal was to make the largest profit possible for my employer. I was caught in a spiral that - with the support of my bosses - continued to lead up and up. — Jerome Kerviel

The subordinate's job is not to reform or reeducate the boss, not to make him conform to what the business schools or the management book say bosses should be like. It is to enable a particular boss to perform as a unique individual. — Peter Drucker

If newsmen do not tell the truth as they see it because it might make waves, or if their bosses decide something should or should not be broadcast because of Washington or Main Street consequences, we have dishonored ourselves and we have lost the First Amendment by default. — Richard S. Salant

Those in powerless positions aren't about to complain about bullying bosses, abusive supervisors or corrupt co-workers. There is no safe way to do so and no process that promises redress. — Margaret Heffernan

Overachievement is aimed at people who want to maximize their potential. And to do that, I insist you throw caution to the wind, ignore the pleas of parents, coaches, spouses, and bosses to be "realistic." Realistic people do not accomplish extraordinary things because the odds against success stymie them. The best performers ignore the odds. I will show you that instead of limiting themselves to what's probable, the best will pursue the heart-pounding, exciting, really big, difference-making dreams-so long as catching them might be possible. — John Eliot

Your bosses simply hate you. You created more and more value. They paid you less and less. That's the definition of disdain in my book. — James Altucher

Take romance for instance. Fictional women in romance novels never get their period. They never have morning breath. They orgasm seventeen times a day. And they never seem to have jobs with bosses. — Penny Reid

I am not sure any of the material in Leadership BS would be helpful for small companies and certainly not their owners. Of course, even owners have bosses and need to worry about keeping their jobs - so Power might be more appropriate. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

In the event of total freedom, the desire to dominate rules just as tyrannically as it does with centrally-planned economies. Freedom gave us capitalism, which has come to mean bosses ordering workers about. Workers aren't free; they are chained by their biological needs. Where is their freedom? Oh, the freedom of mobility? They can quit their jobs and work elsewhere? They can switch from one slave-owner to another? The capitalist vision ignores the capitalist reality, which is that bosses tells workers what to do under pain of death by starvation. Tell me that is freedom some more. Tell me another good one. — Robert Peate

What we need to be able to do is count all human experience. So I would like to count the secretarial positions as good training places to take over the jobs of the bosses. — Gloria Steinem

They were conscientious, you couldn't deny it, and they were also flabby, heartless sons-of-bitches. In other words, they were well chosen, as mindlessly enthusiastic as any employer could dream of. Sons that would have delighted my mother, worshiping their bosses, if only she could have had one all to herself, a son she could have been proud of in the eyes of the world, a real legitimate son. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired. — Mike Judge

(It's easier for investors and bosses to spend time and money going after a proven market, even though proven markets are the hardest to break into.) — Seth Godin

In fiction, characters could punch their bosses and get away with it.
In real life, you lost your job, and then you were dining on Cup-a-Soup seven nights a week instead of four. — Sarah Morgan

Even worse, greedy bosses might curtail the workers' freedom of movement through debt peonage or slavery. At the end of the Middle Ages, slavery was almost unknown in Christian Europe. During the early modern period, the rise of European capitalism went hand in hand with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. Unrestrained market forces, rather than tyrannical kings or racist ideologues, were responsible for this calamity. — Yuval Noah Harari

Dear Miss Sam: Thanks so much for your lovely epistle. You've gotten so soft in only three months. Must be all those cookies. If I read you right, you want some assurances that you'll be (1) adored by your bosses, (2) worshipped by your colleagues, (3) appreciated by your clients, (4) virtually guaranteed a partnership which will lead to a long, full, happy life, and (5) given enough office space to make you happy, in spite of the obscene prices per square foot now being demanded by Manhattan landlords (our clients), recession or not. — John Grisham

What is required as we travel towards full unemployment is not new legislation but a gradual change of mental attitude, a shift in values. As our taste for idling grows, we will refuse to work for old-fashioned bosses who demand a five-day, 40-hour, nine-to-five type week, or worse. — Tom Hodgkinson

The starting point of enlightenment, a goal that every person should strive for, is inner leadership. Leadership is far more than something businesspeople do at work. Leadership is all about personal responsibility, self-discovery, and creating value in the world by the people we become. Too many people spend their time blaming others for all that isn't working in their lives. We blame our spouses for our unhappy home lives; we blame our bosses for our distress at work; we blame strangers on the freeway for making us angry; we blame our parents for keeping us small. Blame, blame, blame, blame. But blaming others is nothing more than excusing yourself. Blaming others for the current quality of your life is a sad way to live. In doing so, all you're doing is playing the victim. — Robin S. Sharma

Who should we be trying to make the most proud? Our family? Our friends? Our teachers or bosses? What about the one who molded us out of the earth itself, who formed us like clay, and instilled within us the very breath of life that shaped the universe? — James D. Maxon

'Horrible Bosses' is just blatant, outright fun. I've read some of what the critics have said, and it's incredible how mean critics can be about comedies ... It's so ridiculous. — Chris Pine

It's a tough world out there. You're going to prepare yourself for politics, bad bosses, hating employees - and usually when you're the absolute best, you get hated on the most. — Kanye West

I had several different bosses during the early years of 'Dilbert.' They were all pretty sure I was mocking someone else. — Scott Adams

When I want to talk to someone from Golden Boy, I make sure Richard calls me. Bosses talk to bosses. — Adrien Broner

Certainly businesses the world over are facing greater competitive pressure than ever before, and this leads to executive stress which, in turn, tends to bring out authoritarian tendencies in many bosses. To balance this, we now know a lot more about how we can successfully cope with a situation that is not likely to improve in the near future. — Srikumar Rao

We develop ulcers, high blood pressure, headaches, and other physical problems in part because our stress systems aren't designed to handle the "dangers" of our brave new world: computer crashes, micromanaging bosses, 12-way conference calls, and long commutes in rush-hour traffic. — Scott Berkun

It was the kind of upheaval, smack in the middle of adulthood, which was messy enough to make me consider, back then, the wisdom of early marriage. When we're young, after all, our lives are so much more pliant, can be joined without too much fuss. When we grow on our own, we take on responsibility, report to bosses, become bosses; we get our own bank accounts, acquire our own debts, sign our own leases. The infrastructure of our adulthood takes shape, connects to other lives; it firms up and gets less bendable. The prospect of breaking it all apart and rebuilding it elsewhere becomes a far more daunting project than it might have been had we just married someone at twenty-two, and done all that construction together. The — Rebecca Traister

There will always be bosses, pastors and government officials over us - and this structure is actually a good thing. It is not our job to derail it or work around it. — David Pritchard

In early July, Morgan Stanley received its first wake-up call. It came from Greg Lippmann and his bosses at Deutsche Bank, who, in a conference call, told Howie Hubler and his bosses that the $4 billion in credit default swaps Hubler had sold Deutsche Bank's CDO desk six months earlier had moved in Deutsche Bank's favor. Could Morgan Stanley please wire $1.2 billion to Deutsche Bank by the end of the day? Or, as Lippmann actually put it - according to someone who heard the exchange - Dude, you owe us one point two billion. — Michael Lewis

Teacher unions are an interest group that acts in defense of their own interests, which means the union bosses' interests, not the members. — Peter Brimelow

If a man's heart is rankling with discord and ill feeling toward you, you can't win him to your way of thinking with all the logic in Christendom. Scolding parents and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging wives ought to realize that people don't want to change their minds. They can't be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly. — Dale Carnegie

I'm sure in a lot of publishing houses that there is a frustration that people feel, that they're not in control, that they are puppets and the corporate bosses are manipulating the strings. — Larry Kirshbaum

There are two types of lazy bosses. One is so lazy that they make you do not only your own work but theirs too. Worse, they lie to you about it, unloading all responsibility for their actions. The other is so lazy that not only do they not do their own work but they can't even be bothered to provide you work to do. These bosses lie as well, but only to themselves, passively. The first is the hardest boss to work for, the second the easiest. — Mat Johnson

Due to their reluctance to tie
themselves down at a young age, they have the capacity as well
as the predisposition to be their own bosses and following their
own dreams. — Bernard Salt

Surprisingly enough, I haven't had a letter from Amateur Boxing Scotland bosses offering their congratulations for my Melbourne medal win. — Kenny Anderson

Many people are smarter than their stupid bosses. — Toba Beta

Of course, we knew that this meant an attack on the union. The bosses intended gradually to get rid of us, employing in our place child labor and raw immigrant girls who would work for next to nothing. — Rose Schneiderman

The radical rightwing pegs Hollywood as a leftist town, which is completely wrong. There are a lot of actors, writers, and directors who talk a liberal agenda ... but all the studio bosses, for as long as there have been studios, have all been as far rightwing as you can possibly imagine. — Paul Haggis

It does not matter whether I am in Hong Kong or Sao Paolo - people always want to talk about toxic bosses and what to do about them. — Srikumar Rao

In fact, when we listen to the church today, at least in the West, we are often left with impression that Christianity actually has very little to do with truth. Christianity is only about feeling better about ourselves, about leaping over our difficulties, about being more satisfied, about have better relationships, about getting on with our mothers-in-law, about understanding teenage rebellion, about coping with our unreasonable bosses, about finding greater sexual satisfaction, about getting rich, about receiving our own private miracles, and much else besides. It is about everything except truth. And yet this truth, personally embodied in Christ, gives us a place to stand in order to deal with the complexities of life, such as broken relations, teenage rebellion, and job insecurities. — David F. Wells

My bosses would be beyond pissed if tomorrow's New York Times read: "Solid gold tiger eats stupid couple who were taking photos of it with their camera phone. — R.R. Virdi

(from his random observations after reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens)
In the Old Curiosity Shop I discovered that in the character of Dick Swiveller, Dickens provided P.G. Wodehouse with pretty much the whole of his oeuvre. In David Copperfield, David's bosses Spenlow and Jorkins are what must be the earliest fictional representations of good cop/bad cop. — Nick Hornby

My work is a love for me; I'd do it for free, but don't tell my bosses. — Chick Hearn

I've got corporate executives, my bosses ... this is true ... who will text message me ... and say, 'Hey a, heard you had chemotherapy today, want me to stop by and pick you up something to eat and bring it to you?' Whose boss does that? My bosses do that. — Stuart Scott

Now workers should have the right to join unions. But unions should not be forced upon workers. And unions should not have the power to take money our of their members' paychecks to buy the support of politicians that are favored by the union bosses. — Mitt Romney

The author observes the shift now that children are not a source of labor for the family, that they have gone from employees of the parents to the bosses of the parents. — Jennifer Senior

When I was with the Labor Party, I'd get into trouble because the party bosses determined that some of what I wrote, or proposed to write about, wasn't conducive to their policies or to electoral success. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The people are angry. It's running out of control. And unfortunately, there are a group of police that have become nothing more than enforcers for the political and financial crime bosses. — Gerald Celente

Anarchists are opposed to violence; everyone knows that. The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations. It is life based on freedom of the individual, without the intervention of the gendarme. For this reason we are the enemies of capitalism which depends on the protection of the gendarme to oblige workers to allow themselves to be exploited
or even to remain idle and go hungry when it is not in the interest of the bosses to exploit them. We are therefore enemies of the State which is the coercive violent organization of society. — Errico Malatesta

Companies used to be able to function with autocratic bosses. We don't live in that world anymore. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you've lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn't belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don't care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve. — Tom Morello

At its best, management theory is part of the democratic promise of America. It aims to replace the despotism of the old bosses with the rule of scientific law. It offers economic power to all who have the talent and energy to attain it. — Matthew Stewart

When you retire, you switch bosses - from the one who hired you to the one who married you. — Gene Perret

Managers who work for very senior people must not remain in awe of their bosses if they are to be effective. — Subroto Bagchi