Conant Quotes & Sayings

A conceptual scheme is never discarded merely because of a few stubborn facts with which it cannot be reconciled; a conceptual scheme is either modified or replaced by a better one, never abandoned with nothing left to take its place. — James Bryant Conant

A Harvard education consists of what you learn at Harvard while you are not studying. — James Bryant Conant

I would assert that highly effective leaders are made more than they're born. Every leader I know who's been highly effective has worked hard at it, and they've been students of it. The more you're a student of leadership, the more you figure out what works for you and the more effective you're going to be. — Douglas Conant

There is only one proved method of assisting the advancement of pure science-that of picking men of genius, backing them heavily, and leaving them to direct themselves. — James Bryant Conant

My most memorable meal is every Thanksgiving. I love the food: the turkey and stuffing; the sweet potatoes and rice, which come from my mother's Southern heritage; the mashed potatoes, which come from my wife's Midwestern roots; the Campbell's green-bean casserole; and of course, pumpkin pie. — Douglas Conant

Even a brief interaction can change the way people think about themselves, their leaders, and the future. Each of those many connections you make has the potential to become a high point or a low point in someone's day. — Douglas Conant

Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations. — James Bryant Conant

Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases. — James Bryant Conant

The packaged food business environment is very Darwinian. You're fighting for survival every year; you evolve and grow or you die. It's really that simple. — Douglas Conant

Often leaders have the best intentions, but people cannot read their minds. That's why it's important to declare yourself: Tell people why you choose to lead and the code you live by. — Douglas Conant

Leadership does take work. And it should. If you aspire to be a leader, you ought to treat leadership as a craft, you ought to become a student of it, and you ought to work at it. And if you're not willing to work at it, well, you get what you give. — Douglas Conant

In a letter to Gouverneur Morris (February 27, 1802), he drops into the following gloomy forebodings: -

"Mine is an odd destiny. Perhaps no man in the United States has sacrificed or done more for the present Constitution than myself; and, contrary to all my anticipations of its fate, as you know, from the very beginning, I am still laboring to prop the frail and worthless fabric. Yet I have the murmurs of its friends no less than the curses of its foes for my reward. What can I do better than withdraw from the scene? Every day proves to me more and more that this American world was not made for me. — Charles A. Conant

If you cultivate a relationship in a genuine, thoughtful way, people will be more inclined to want to help you even though they don't have to help you. — Douglas Conant

On a personal level, I send out about 20 thank-you notes a day to staffers, on all levels. And every six weeks I have lunch with a group of a dozen or so employees, to get their perspective on the business, to address problems and to get feedback. — Douglas Conant

To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace. — Douglas Conant

The corporate world has the resources to improve the world. It's where people live and work. — Douglas Conant

Democracy is a small hard core of common agreement, surrounded by a rich variety of individual differences. — James Bryant Conant

Most people that derail as leaders in the corporate world, it's not because they couldn't do the math and calculate return on investment properly. The issues are communication and understanding. All of what typically would've been called the 'soft stuff.' You have to be authentic. You have to be dialed into the soft stuff. — Douglas Conant

Diversity of opinion within the framework of loyalty to our free
society is not only basic to a university but to the entire nation. — James Bryant Conant

Too many leaders are so caught up in the momentum of work that they lose sight of the opportunity to connect with people. I discovered that the more fully present I was with other people, the more fully present they were with me, and the more productive our relationship became over time. — Douglas Conant

Science advances, not by the accumulation of new facts, but by the continuos development of new concepts. — James Bryant Conant

It would be counterproductive to tell people exactly what they are supposed to do and exactly how they are supposed to do it to a point where they become more concerned about your expectations than about completing their work in a quality way. — Douglas Conant

Public education is a great instrument of social change. Through it, if we so desire, we can make our country more nearly a democracy without classes. To do so will require the efforts of us all-teachers, administrators, taxpayers and statesmen. Education is a social process, perhaps the most important process in determining the future of our country; it should command a far larger portion of our national income than it does today. — James Bryant Conant

The time to build a network is always before you need one. — Douglas Conant

People lead complicated lives and aren't hanging on your every word or the company mission statement. You have to become a broken record of your expectations of the organization and show people why it is relevant and how it works in specific ways. — Douglas Conant

The dignity of man is vindicated as much by the thinker and poet as by the statesman and soldier. — James Bryant Conant

You can't talk your way out of something you behaved your way into. — Douglas Conant

A strong man next to you in bed is a comfort, but real security is a German Shepherd bitch on guard at the door. — Susan Conant

Integrity means having the courage to do what is right, and what is aligned with your values, no matter the situation. — Douglas Conant

Learning to celebrate success is a key component of learning how to win in the market. — Douglas Conant

It seems as though I were in a lunatic asylum, but I am never sure who is the attendant and who the inmate. — James Bryant Conant

If you're a wounded company, the other companies that have been around for a hundred years will smell it, and they will take advantage of you in a heartbeat. It takes a long time to get back in fighting form. — Douglas Conant

If you have people who are high-performing working for you, it's so easy to do your job. Otherwise, you can't even agree on the time of the meeting or who will bring the coffee. — Douglas Conant

When I arrived at Campbell on January 8, 2001, the company had lost half its market value in the prior year. They had to cut costs to the point where they were literally taking the chicken out of chicken noodle soup and the product was no longer competitive. — Douglas Conant

You must bring great resolve to your work. It's not all a bed of roses. — Douglas Conant

Even the development of the steam engine owed but little to the advancement of science. — James Bryant Conant

I strongly believe that you can't win in the marketplace unless you win first in the workplace. If you don't have a winning culture inside, it's hard to compete in the very tough world outside. — Douglas Conant

I love books because they are easier than people. — Courtney Conant

Courage means feeling all those hard human emotions - all that uncertainty and anxiety - and getting the job done anyway. — Douglas Conant

Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy based on excellence of performance. — James Bryant Conant

When providing people with the direction and expected behaviors, you need to be alert to the fact that they will hold you accountable. People want to know if you are walking the talk. They will be watching your every move and you need to be one in the same ... every minute of every day. — Douglas Conant

Scientific research is compounded of ... empirical procedures, general speculative ideas, and mathematical or abstract reasoning. — James Bryant Conant

Most people think of leaders as being these outgoing, very visible, and charismatic people, which I find to be a very narrow perception. The key challenge for managers today is to get beyond the surface of your colleagues. You might just find that you have introverts embedded within your organization who are natural-born leaders. — Douglas Conant

There's no evidence that large, diversified food companies win over time. — Douglas Conant

one of the first to provide poor invalids with a level of care that had previously been available only to the rich. In — Jennet Conant

You have to be a well-rounded leader. You can't fly by the seat of your pants anymore. You have to be incredibly tough-minded about standards of performance, but you also have to be incredibly tenderhearted with the people you're working with. — Douglas Conant

The action is in the interaction. — Douglas Conant

Trust gives you the permission to give people direction, get everyone aligned, and give them the energy to go get the job done. Trust enables you to execute with excellence and produce extraordinary results. As you execute with excellence and deliver on your commitments, trust becomes easier to inspire, creating a flywheel of performance. — Douglas Conant

As a CEO, you get sucked into dealing with all the tasks of being a CEO. There's a big meeting, a big discussion, and you get into all the big issues, which is your job. But what CEOs often lose sight of is that it's all about the people who work for you. For every 1,000 decisions, 999 were being made when I was not in the room. — Douglas Conant

I've met so many leaders who realize that telling your colleagues something that is on your mind is so much easier than keeping it in. Sometimes the things we make up in our heads are not nearly as big a deal as we think. — Douglas Conant

Autobiographical Interview, ed. James Conant and — Thomas S. Kuhn

In every section of the entire area where the word science may properly be applied, the limiting factor is a human one. We shall have rapid or slow advance in this direction or in that depending on the number of really first-class men who are engaged in the work in question ... So in the last analysis, the future of science in this country will be determined by our basic educational policy. — James Bryant Conant

Education is what is left after all that has been learnt is forgotten. — James Bryant Conant

Love," as he now conceived of it, involved "slow growth, many slowly formed bonds, tests by vicissitudes as well as pleasure, mutual sharing of esthetic experiences, humor, sensory things from food through music to passion, etc." Any truly lasting relationship, he concluded would necessitate "a lengthy apprenticeship. — Jennet Conant

You have the opportunity to make a tremendous impact on the lives of the people with whom you work and live. Make the most of it. — Douglas Conant

Every vital organization owes its birth and life to an exciting and daring idea. — James Bryant Conant

I have a foundational belief that business results start with culture and your people. — Douglas Conant

For the first few weeks in Santa Fe, Oppenheimer and his key staff worked out of the office at 109 East Palace Avenue in the early mornings and made daily trips up to Los Alamos to inspect the progress of the construction. "The laboratories at the site were in a sketchy state, but that did not deter the workers," Dorothy wrote of those hectic early days. "In the morning buses, consisting of station wagons, sedans, or trucks, would leave 109 and pick up the men at the ranches and take them up the Hill. Occasionally, a driver would forget to stop at one or another of the ranches and the stranded and frustrated scientists would call in a white heat. — Jennet Conant

The stumbling way in which even the ablest of the scientists in every generation have had to fight through thickets of erroneous observations, misleading generalizations, inadequate formulation, and unconscious prejudice is rarely appreciated by those who obtain their scientific knowledge from textbooks. — James Bryant Conant

He who enters a university walks on hallowed ground. — James Bryant Conant

We will not have any of these cases in the Soviet Union," said a Soviet delegate confidently. Don Francis couldn't resist saying to Marc Conant in his loudest stage whisper, "And they won't, all right." In a stern Russian accent, Francis continued: "You have AIDS - bang, bang, bang." The Soviets were not amused. — Randy Shilts

Therefore, a grotesque account of a period some thousands of years ago is taken seriously though it be built by piling special assumptions on special assumptions, ad hoc hypothesis [invented for a purpose] on ad hoc hypothesis, and tearing apart the fabric of science whenever it appears convenient. The result is a fantasia which is neither history nor science. — James Bryant Conant

But after a sojourn in the Adirondacks restored his health, he became persuaded of the curative powers of the mountain air and devoted himself to the study of respiratory problems. He — Jennet Conant

I have found that the more I honored others, the more they honored me and the more fulfilling my career became. In the business arena, I have been surrounded by people with awesome skills. The difference between good and great is determined by the mindset you choose to bring to the work. The concept of honor should be part of that mindset. — Douglas Conant

Just like a turtle, we only make progress if we stick our neck out. — James Bryant Conant

You have to talk about mistakes and then talk about what you have learned and how to move forward. You acknowledge missteps right away, you deal with them, and you move ahead. — Douglas Conant

Ultimately as a leader, you're evaluated on how you interact with people. If you do it well, you develop a reputation as effective leader. If you don't, you develop a reputation for being a highly ineffective leader. — Douglas Conant

I venture to define science as a series of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiment and observation and fruitful of further experiments and observations. The test of a scientific theory is, I suggest, its fruitfulness. — James Bryant Conant

his deeply ingrained belief that the rich should repay their debt to society. Throughout his life, Alfred Loomis would feel that moneymaking alone was not a satisfactory existence. — Jennet Conant

Behavior which appears superficially correct but is intrinsically corrupt always irritates those who see below the surface. — James Bryant Conant

Extroverts may get places faster, but for introverts it's all about working at the pace you need and, at the end of the day, performing at your best. — Douglas Conant

All of us introverts aspire to be more outgoing, but it's not in our nature. When I was nearly 50, I discovered that the best thing to do was to tell everyone I worked with that I'm just shy. People are not mind readers - you need to let them know. — Douglas Conant

Whether a man lives or dies in vain can be measured only by the way he faces his own problems, by the success or failure of the inner conflict within his own soul. And of this no one may know save God. — James Bryant Conant