Business Schools Quotes & Sayings

Business schools make a fortune forcing their students to take in a HUGE amount of information. The majority of it is theoretical. The majority of that is useless. — Josh Kaufman

So nobody must be allowed to think at all. Down with the public schools! Children must be drilled mentally by quarter-educated herdsmen, whose wages would stop at the first sign of disagreement with the bosses. For the rest, deafen the whole world with senseless clamour. Mechanize everything! Give nobody a chance to think. Standardize "amusement." The louder and more cacophonous, the better! Brief intervals between one din and the next can be filled with appeals, repeated 'till hypnotic power gives them the force of orders, to buy this or that product of the "Business men" who are the real power in the State. Men who betray their country as obvious routine.
The history of the past thirty years is eloquent enough, one would think. What these sodden imbeciles never realize is that a living organism must adapt itself intelligently to its environment, or go under at the first serious change of circumstance. — Aleister Crowley

Having taught economics courses at private vocational schools and universities, I have always had a problem with GNP as a yardstick of prosperity. GNP is improved by increases in questionable activities such as consumption of cigarettes and the production of weapons. Moreover, a substantial increase in car accidents will favorably affect GNP because more funerals, hospital visits, car repairs, and new car purchases will result. — Ernie J Zelinski

At the turn of the century, Edwin Binney and his nephew, C. Harold Smith, who were in the paint business, thought there might be a market for colored wax sticks and began experimenting with beeswax and some of the newer petroleum-based varieties. In 1903, they produced the first rainbow box of eight wax crayons, which they sold successfully to schools. Alice Binney, Edwin's wife, christened them "Crayolas" by joining the French word craie, or chalk, with "ola," short for "oleaginous," or oily. Many — Holley Bishop

Business schools reward complex behavior but it's the simple behavior that makes you successful in life — John C. Maxwell

In many ways, the U.S. bureaucracy has moved away from the Weberian ideal of an energetic and efficient organization staffed by people chosen for their ability and technical knowledge. The system as a whole is less merit-based: rather than coming from top schools, 45 percent of recent new hires to the federal service are veterans, as mandated by Congress. And a number of surveys of the federal work force paint a depressing picture. According to the scholar Paul Light, "Federal employees appear to be more motivated by compensation than mission, ensnared in careers that cannot compete with business and nonprofits, troubled by the lack of resources to do their jobs, dissatisfied with the rewards for a job well done and the lack of consequences for a job done poorly, and unwilling to trust their own organizations. — Anonymous

I just think that we're all trying to make ourselves emaciated, in order to pretend that we're all disappearing, as we move forward in every level of society and it's so frightening. This is all a big reaction to the fact that there are more women in medical school than there are men now and I am pretty sure it will be the same soon in law schools and in business. — Meryl Streep

There is a lot of money to be made from miseducation, from the easy to read easy to learn textbooks, workbooks, teacher manuals, educational games and visual aids. The textbook business is more than a billion-dollar-a-year industry and some of its biggest profits come from 'audio-visual aids' - flash cards, tape cassettes, and filmstrips. No wonder the education industry encourages schools to focus on surface education. — Marva Collins

It's true that many of the leaders who started at non-elite colleges as undergrads later attended prominent graduate schools in law, business, medicine, and so on. But the point is that they found their own way there - as young men and women in their early 20s, not teenagers pressed into action by parents and peers. — Nina Easton

Our schools are, in a sense, factories, in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life. The specifications for manufacturing come from the demands of twentieth-century civilization, and it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down. — Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

One of the big failings of art schools is that students aren't given any teaching on how to survive as a one-person business, which is what it is. — Stuart Pearson Wright

Business schools need to address students on a human being level, not as cogs in the machine to supply fresh talent to big companies. — Srikumar Rao

Newsmen have a very short attention span. It is a prerequisite in the business. That is why the news accounts of almost anything make sense to all ages up to the age of twelve. If one wishes to enjoy newspapers, it is wise to halt all intellectual development right at that age. The schools are doing their level best to achieve this goal. — John D. MacDonald

Businessmen are not in business to lose customers, and schools do not exist to free their clients from the agencies of mass persuasion. School and media possess a productive monopoly upon the imagination of a child. — Jonathan Kozol

I tell you what Hispanics in Virginia tell me they want. They want access to the American dream. That's why they come here to Virginia and to America, so they want more opportunities to start small business, better schools. — Bob McDonnell

NVC can be effectively applied at all levels of communication and in diverse situations: intimate relationships, families, schools, organizations and institutions, therapy and counseling, diplomatic and business negotiations, disputes and conflicts of any nature. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

We are called to go make disciples, but how do disciples live? How do we function in the world - in our marriages, families, schools and places of business? How do we live as salt and light in the society? — Michael Brown

Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine. — Jill Lepore

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective. — Warren Buffett

Republicans get a lot of money from big business, but they are not tied to the union dollar. As a result they have been aggressive advocates of school reform, charter schools and vouchers for private schools. — Juan Williams

Did my education fail me? Or, even worse, did I fail my education? There's a larger question to be asked here, too, since I'm also a microcosm of my peer group. Why did so many highly educated people from elite business schools and privileged background contribute to and exacerbate the financial crisis of 2008-2009? Did our education fail us? Or did we fail our education? These questions haven't been answered adequately by the prestigious universities that groomed all these high-powered creators of economic mayhem. — Guy Spier

He taught me to read and write. I learned my lessons with my elder children. He has always kept school in our house, every night of his life. Our children supposed it was for them; I knew it was quite as much for me. While I sat at knitting or sewing, I spelled over the words he gave out. I know nothing of my ancestors, save that they came from the lowlands of Holland, down where there were cities, schools, and business. They were well educated, but they would not take the trouble to teach their children. As I have spoken to you, my husband taught me. All I know I learn from — Gene Stratton-Porter

Cove is essentially a collaboration, coordination and communication tool for the administration of organizations and communities, from the Stanford Graduate School of Business Entrepreneurship Club to church groups and schools. — Ruchi Sanghvi

All our institutions rest upon business. Without it we should not have schools, colleges, churches, parks, playgrounds, pavements, books, libraries, art, music, or anything else that we value. — Charles Gates Jr.

Creating the culture of burnout is opposite to creating a culture of sustainable creativity. This is something that needs to be taught in business schools. This mentality needs to be introduced as a leadership and performance-enhancing tool. — Arianna Huffington

Everyone agrees that the failure of our high schools is tragic. It's bad business, and it's bad policy. But we act as if it can't be helped. It can be helped. We designed these high schools; we can redesign them. — Melinda Gates

In a universe where all life is in movement, where ever fact seen in perspective is totally engaging, we impose stillness on lively young bodies, distort reality to dullness, make action drudgery. Those who submit - as the majority does - are conditioned to a life lived without their human birthright: work done with the joy and creativity of love.
But what are schools for if not to make children fall so deeply in love with the world that they really want to learn about it? That is the true business of schools. And if they succeed in it, all other desirable developments follow of themselves.
In a proper school, no fact would ever be presented as a soulless one, for the simple reason that there is no such thing. Every facet of reality, discovered where it lives, startles with its wonder, beauty, meaning. — Marjorie Spock

The efforts of the medical profession in the US to control: ... its ... job it proposes to monopolize. It has been carrying on a vigorous campaign all over the country against new methods and schools of healing because it wants the business ... I have watched this medical profession for a long time and it bears watching. — Clarence Darrow

Today, everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time. Business meetings must be snappy, with bullet lists and animated graphics, so executives aren't bored. Malls and stores must be engaging, so they amuse as well as sell us. Politicians must have pleasing video personalities and tell us only what we want to hear. Schools must be careful not to bore young minds that expect the speed and complexity of television. Students must be amused - everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties. — Michael Crichton

Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I've done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin's success. I am aware that the ideas of business as being fun and creative goes right against the grain of convention, and it's certainly not how the they teach it at some of those business schools, where business means hard grind and lots of 'discounted cash flows' and net' present values'. — Richard Branson

Hiring people with diverse backgrounds brings in a flexibility of thought and openness to new ways of doing things, as opposed to hiring clones from business schools who have been taught a codified way of doing business. — Yvon Chouinard

His principle can be quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still alive. He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a man alive, walking on two legs about the world. For this reason he fires bullets at his best friends; for this reason he arranges ladders and collapsible chimneys to steal his own property; for this reason he goes plodding around a whole planet to get back to his own home; and for this reason he has been in the habit of taking the woman whom he loved with a permanent loyalty, and leaving her about (so to speak) at schools, boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he might recover her again and again with a raid and a romantic elopement. He seriously sought by a perpetual recapture of his bride to keep alive the sense of her perpetual value, and the perils that should be run for her sake. — G.K. Chesterton

Attitude is the most important word in any language. Your attitude controls every aspect of your life. Attitude should definitely be taught in all schools and every business course ... Remember you don't have to be sick to get better. Your attitude can always be improved. — Bob Proctor

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more because they have benefitted more. Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine. During an emergency, like an earthquake or a hurricane, taxes pay for rescue workers, shelters, and services. For people whose lives are devastated by other kinds of disaster, like the disaster of poverty, taxes pay, even, for food. — Jill Lepore

Trust in families and in neighborhoods and individuals to make sense of the important question, 'What is education for?' If some of them answer differently from what you might prefer, that's really not your business, and it shouldn't be your problem. Our type of schooling has deliberately concealed the fact that such a question must be framed and not taken for granted if anything beyond a mockery of democracy is to be nurtured. It is illegitimate to have an expert answer that question for you. — John Taylor Gatto

Unlike in Europe, where serving is often a career rather than a backup plan, American table-waiting remains a bootstrap business, and some of the biggest skeptics of waiter training courses and schools are seasoned servers themselves. — David Sax

I am personally interested in more than just business schools. However, life has been good to me, and it's been good to me through a business career. I think the chance to help strengthen the foundation of young people going into business, as I did, just appeals to me. — Gerry Schwartz

American Education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will Stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so? — Diane Ravitch

As she nurtured her business relationships, Hall spent less time meeting teachers and parents and visiting schools. Often, she seemed to approach her job more as a CEO than an educator. — Anonymous

The Time to Succeed Coalition brings together an unprecedented group of leaders from education and business, communities and academia to say that it is time to strike the shackles of an outdated school calendar from our disadvantaged schools. — Chris Gabrieli

In the schools of business administration Negroes are trained exclusively in the psychology and economics of Wall Street and are, therefore, made to despise the opportunities to run ice wagons, push banana carts, and sell peanuts among their own people. Foreigners, who have not studied economics but have studied Negroes, take up this business and grow rich. — Carter G. Woodson

I've been among their critics [MBA programs]. Much of what I've seen in business schools is quite non-rigorous. Anecdotal histories are stretched to illustrate favored slogans. Evidence of their effectiveness is similarly anecdotal. — Charles R. Morris

My idea of government support was, you supply me with hospitals, schools and the environment to do well and that will do me fine. But do not poke your nose in my business. — Alan Sugar

Business schools tend to focus on topics that are suitable to blackboards, so they overemphasize organization and finance. Until very recently, they virtually ignored manufacturing. I think of lot of the troubles of the 1970s and 1980s, and now more recently the 2000s can be traced pretty directly to the biases of the business schools. — Charles R. Morris

In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored. We spend long hours trying to teach a variety of courses on, say, the structure of government or the structure of the amoeba. But how much effort goes into studying the structure of everyday life - the way time is allocated, the personal uses of money, the places to go for help in a society exploding with complexity? We take for granted that young people already know their way around our social structure. In fact, most have only the dimmest image of the way the world of work or business is organized. Most students have no conception of the architecture of their own city's economy, or the way the local bureaucracy operates, or the place to go to lodge a complaint against a merchant. Most do not even understand how their own schools - even universities - are structured, let alone how much structures are changing under the impact of the Third Wave. — Alvin Toffler

We really have to, as a country, recognize that school is where people get their identity not just as a scholar, or a future business person, but as a citizen. And we need to make sure that schools set them up for success as citizens. — Benjamin Jealous

Small business is the gateway to opportunity for those who want a piece of the American dream. [ ... ] Well, wouldn't it be nice to hear a little more about the forgotten heroes of America-those who create most of our new jobs, like the owners of stores down the street; the faithfuls who support our churches, synagogues, schools, and communities; the brave men and women everywhere who produce our goods, feed a hungry world, and keep our families warm while they invest in the future to build a better America? That's where miracles are made, not in Washington, D.C. — Ronald Reagan

Ivanov: You only qualified last year, my dear friend, you're still young and confident, but I am thirty-five. I have the right to give you some advice. Don't marry a Jew or a psychopath or a bluestocking but choose yourself someone ordinary, someone a shade of grey, with no bright colour and no superfluous noises. In general, construct your whole life on a conventional pattern. The greyer, the more monotonous the background, the better. My dear fellow, don't do
battle against thousands all on your own, don't tilt against windmills, don't beat your head against walls ... And may
God preserve you from all kinds of rational farming, newfangled schools, fiery speeches ... Shut yourself in your shell and do your little God-given business ... It's snugger, healthier and more honest. — Anton Chekhov

The business of schools is to design, create, and invent high-quality, intellectually demanding schoolwork that students find engaging. — Phillip C. Schlechty

Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive. — Antonin Scalia

You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else's life. They're plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That's their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously. They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead. — Dalton Trumbo

I see top business schools working to bridge this gap [between academic research and business application] by respecting executive education, by having more mature students who proactively draw from faculty what they know they need, and by having faculty who are willing to leave their ivory towers for the murky world of business reality. Unfortunately, at other times, business professors have little or not interest or savvy about business issues. — Dave Ulrich

For ecommerce data derived from digital experiences, such as the keywords and phrases from search engines to the frequency of purchases of various customer segments, data is most often not normally distributed. Thus, much of the classic and Bayesian statistical methods taught in schools are not immediately applicable to digital ecommerce data. That does not mean that the classic methods you learned in college or business school do not apply to digital data; it means that the best analysts understand this fact. — Judah Phillips

Business schools are failing to teach the students about the risks of market failures. We need to include some material on market failures in the core of curriculum. — Pankaj Ghemawat

Everything is technocratic - the development of expertise - and everything is ultimately justified in technocratic terms. Elite schools like to boast that they teach their students how to think, but all they mean at this point is that they train them in the analytic and rhetorical skills that are necessary for success in business and the professions. — William Deresiewicz

Drill in exact translation is an excellent way of disposing the mind against that looseness and exaggeration with which the sensationalists have corrupted our world. If schools of journalism knew their business, they would graduate no one who could not render the Greek poets. — Richard M. Weaver

In order to succeed in business a man does not need a degree from a school of business administration. These schools train the subalterns for routine jobs. They certainly do not train entrepreneurs. — Ludwig Von Mises

Most business schools are geared toward churning out investment bankers and management consultants. — Vivek Wadhwa

Winfree came from a family in which no one had gone to college. He got started, he would say, by not having proper education. His father, rising from the bottom of the life insurance business to the level of vice president, moved family almost yearly up and down the East Coast, and Winfree attended than a dozen schools before finishing high school. He developed a feeling that the interesting things in the world had to do with biology and mathematics and a companion feeling that no standard combination of the two subjects did justice to what was interesting. So he decided not to take a standard approach. He took a five-year course in engineering physics at Cornell University, learning applied mathematics and a full range of hands-on laboratory styles. Prepared to be hired into military-industrial complex, he got a doctorate in biology, striving to combine experiment with theory in new ways. — James Gleick

Provides American business with the only reliable domestic market in the world.
Schools train individuals to respond as a mass. Boys and girls are drilled in being bored, frightened, envious, emotionally needy, generally incomplete. A successful mass production economy requires such a clientele. A small business, small farm economy like that of the Amish requires individual competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and universal participation; our own requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious, familyless, friendless, godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between Cheers and Seinfeld is a subject worth arguing about. — John Taylor Gatto

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

Nothing can kill the future dreams and goals of a new graduate than 50k of debt like an anvil over your head. I got to Indiana University not because I visited the campus and loved everything about it. I picked Indiana University because I saw a list of the top 10 business schools and it was the cheapest. — Mark Cuban

The journey that 'In Praise of Slowness' has made since publication shows how far this message resonates. The book has been translated into more than 30 languages. It appears on reading lists from business schools to yoga retreats. Rabbis, priests and imams have quoted from it in their sermons. — Carl Honore

Business schools don't create successful people. They simply accept them, then take credit for their success. — Josh Kaufman

Business schools have always had a complicated relationship to science, and have a long tradition of repackaging ideology as academic studies. — Carl Cederstrom

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business. — Joel Osteen

Interest in business ethics courses has surged, and student activities at leading business schools are more focused than ever before on making business serve long-term social values. — Peter Singer

For better or worse, the people who become leaders and decision makers in politics, law and business are going to come from schools like Princeton. — Brian Kernighan

By far the most important factor in the success or failure of any school, far more important than tests or standards or business-model methods of accountability, is simply attracting the best-educated, most exciting young people into urban schools and keeping them there. — Jonathan Kozol

I actually went on lectures at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and all the business schools eight years ago, explaining what the implications were and how the platforms could be powerful in creating the narrative of your brand and mobilizing your life so that you become humanized as well. I understood that and thought that was really empowering, not only to artists, but to brands as well and in general. — MC Hammer

Incidentally, sir, while we're on the topic of yoga - may I just say that an hour of deep breathing, yoga, and meditation in the morning constitutes the perfect start to the entrepreneur's day. How I would handle the stresses of this fucking business without yoga, I have no idea. Make yoga a must in all Chinese schools - that's my suggestion. — Aravind Adiga