Quotes & Sayings About General Motors

When General Motors builds a car, they want to meet the specific needs of many customers. But if they custom-make each car, then it will not be economical. — Susumu Tonegawa

It is the instinctive wish of most American businesspeople, even those unlikely to be directly affected, that General Motors not go bankrupt. — Carol Loomis

Owning great landmarks such as the Empire State Building or Trump Tower or the General Motors Building or the Plaza Hotel - there are certain just spectacular landmarks - it's an honor; it's really an honor. — Donald Trump

The Obama administration asked General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner to step down, and he agreed. This is good news for Obama; the last time he tried to get someone to quit, it took months
and even then, he had to promise her a job as secretary of state ... According to the government, Rick Wagoner was forced to resign because of poor performance. That's embarrassing
run an organization that loses billions of dollars and then get fired by a guy who heads up an organization that loses trillions of dollars. — Jay Leno

But there isn't much else most club managers can do to push their teams up the table. After all, players matter much more. As Johan Cruijff said when he was coaching Barcelona, "If your players are better than your opponents, 90 percent of the time you will win." There cannot be many businesses where a manager would make such an extravagant claim. The chairman of General Motors does not say that the art of good management is simply hiring the best designers or the best production managers. — Simon Kuper

The nearest the modern general or admiral comes to a small-arms encounter of any sort is at a duck hunt in the company of corporation executives at the retreat of Continental Motors, Inc. — C. Wright Mills

For value investors, General Motors is a tempting target. The company's share of the North American auto market has steadily declined for two decades, and analysts say the company suffers from weak management and unexciting cars. — Alex Berenson

It's Obama's bad luck that he got elected just as the mayhem of the foreclosures, the banking collapse, and the General Motors disaster was accelerating the surge in unemployment to warp speed. — Tina Brown

Barack Obama likes to point to General Motors as the poster child for the job creation success of his economic policies. However, whatever your sentiments about the government's bailout of General Motors, for every job Barack Obama 'saved-or-created' in the U.S. there were two jobs off shore. — Bob Beauprez

My goal in coming to General Motors was to help restore profitability, build a strong market position and position this iconic company for success. We are clearly on that path. — Edward Whitacre Jr.

Many seemingly independent businessmen or craftsman are more or less well paid retainers of larger corporations, such as the cobbler, operating a United States shoe machine or an automobile dealer holding a license of the General Motors Corporation. — Paul A. Baran

What's good for America better damn well be good for General Motors. — Barack Obama

If General Motors can't survive and run their business like a business, let them go under. — James Woods

Made by General Motors, on order from Sears Roebuck. — Richard Condon

Our goal is to make General Motors the most valuable automotive company. Clearly, that is having sustainable profitability and driving great returns for our shareholders. — Mary Barra

Although the reasons for Michigan's malaise are varied, one big reason is our state's almost uniquely uncompetitive tax structure, which one General Motors official called the costliest of all jurisdictions where GM operates. — Mike Bouchard

If you gave me the choice of being CEO of General Electric or IBM or General Motors, you name it, or delivering papers, I would deliver papers. I would. I enjoyed doing that. I can think about what I want to think. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. — Warren Buffett

Our expanding Canadian operations are concrete evidence of General Motors confidence in Canada. — Charles E. Wilson

Instead of mindlessly tossing billions at or taking billions from the Net as such, investors should be spending their time making sure that it's the future Fords and General Motors of cyberspace that are getting the capital they need. — James Surowiecki

Over the summer we chatted one night while Angie stripped a bed, changed wet sheets, comforted and repajamaed a toddler, and chased down a car of speeding teenagers while shaking a brick at them, never once interrupting the conversation or setting down her margarita. The only reason this woman isn't president of General Motors is because she's chosen not to be. — Jen Lancaster

As I have learned over the years, and will discuss further in subsequent chapters, the reluctance to experiment, test, evaluate, and learn that I experienced at General Motors is all too common. — Richard H. Thaler

No grant of feudal privilege has ever equaled, for effortless return, that of the grandparent who bought and endowed his descendants with a thousand shares of General Motors or General Electric. — John Kenneth Galbraith

General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small money-losing auto subsidiary. — Mark Steyn

My dad was an assembly line worker at AC Spark Plug, which was a division of General Motors, and his job was to build and then inspect the little spark plugs as they came off the line. — Michael Moore

There's only one movie theater in the entire city of Detroit. The entire city has one open movie theater, and it is in the - it is in the General Motors headquarters complex. — Michael Moore

In fact, I've met countless believers who have said, "The church is an organism, not an organization." Yet as they formed those very words, they continued to be devout members of churches that were organized along the lines of General Motors and Microsoft. — Frank Viola

Now having said that, I realize that releasing a film in the real world is like trying to get General Motors to release a handmade car. — Godfrey Reggio

Our thinking behind these agreements is that we want all jobs in General Motors to be good jobs. — Charles E. Wilson

I have a consistent rule: The American people should know as much about the Pentagon as the Soviet Union and China do, as much about General Motors as Ford does, and as much about City Bank as Chase Manhattan does. — Ralph Nader

Does the critic wish to influence the kind of film that costs more than £250,000? It is as if he were to send a postcard to General Motors explaining that he would like them to make a raft next year, or a helicopter, instead of a car. — Kenneth Tynan

If you think about jeans or phones or television, we are used to new brands popping up right and left. But in the car industry, we grew up with Mercedes, BMW, General Motors, and Ford, and nobody can remember during his or her upbringing a new car brand coming to life. — Henrik Fisker

These are the multinationals, like General Motors and Nestle; these are the big industrial groups that weigh, on the monetary scale, much more than big countries like Egypt. — Ahmed Ben Bella

General Motors is alive and kicking today, it is because in 2009 President Obama's administration wrote off 90 percent of its debt. — Yanis Varoufakis

Articulate each meeting's purpose (Making an announcement? Delivering a report?). Terminate the meeting once the purpose is accomplished. Follow up with short communications summarizing the discussion, spelling out new work assignments and deadlines for completing them. General Motors CEO Alfred Sloan's legendary mastery of meeting follow-up helped secure GM's industry dominance in the mid-twentieth century. — Harvard Business School Press

General Motors has no bad years, only good years and better years. — Harlow Curtice

Legalize racing in every State. Sure people will bet, but they get to see the horses run and you certain can't see General Motors and General Electric and General Utility run when you bet on them. — Will Rogers

My Dad sold automobiles as a general manager of a General Motors automobile dealership. He was a job creator. Everyone of those cars he sold he created a job for somebody on the assembly line. — Joe Biden

Lucas was courting a range of other potential buyers at the same time, including Siemens, Hallmark, General Motors' EDS division, and Philips. But as one deal after another fell through, the balance of power tilted toward Steve, who didn't need the group as much as Lucas needed the money. So he was perfectly willing to play tough himself. "At one point," says Barnes, who helped with the negotiations, "the delays went on forever and he just went and told one of their executives to 'fuck off.' One of the Lucas team said, 'You can't say that to one of our EVPs.' 'Yes I can,' he replied. 'And fuck you, too.' — Brent Schlender

Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the other generals. — Michael Parenti

I wouldn't say she looked exactly wistful, but neither did she look as hard to get as a controlling interest in General Motors — Raymond Chandler

After Spain, World War II was simple. I wasn't even tempted to pick up a gun to fight for General Motors, U.S. Steel, or the Chase Manhattan Bank, even if Hitler was running the other side. — David T. Dellinger

Sometimes Geraldine feels like she can drive forever. Maybe that's partially why she took a job at Milo General Motors. Driving is the best means of escape that the human race has, at least, that's her opinion. She's never had the guts to try drugs before, both because her sister was a junkie in the last few months she knew her, and because she's heard the overdose horror stories, seen 'Requiem for a Dream', smelled the vapours of a meth lab that Julia's boyfriend built, heard the crunching glass of crack vials and heroine needles when they happen to break. Even this alone is too surreal, not to mention that if she were high or tripping on acid or whatever the drug of choice may be, this would give the ghosts more power to morph into something even more nightmarish than they already are. — Rebecca McNutt

I say, they [those at the top] don't have to conspire, because they all think alike. The president of General Motors and the president of Chase Manhattan Bank really are not going to disagree much on anything, nor would the editor of the New York Times disagree with them. They all tend to think quite alike, otherwise they would not be in those jobs. — Gore Vidal

To make good decisions, CEOs need the courage to seek out disagreement. Alfred Sloan, the longtime CEO and chairman of General Motors, once interrupted a committee meeting with a question: "Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here?" All the committee members nodded. "Then," Sloan said, "I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what this decision is about. — Chip Heath

General Motors could buy Delaware if DuPont were willing to sell it. — Ralph Nader

(When the company was finally broken up in the 1980s to satisfy antitrust regulators, it was worth more than the combined worth of General Electric, General Motors, Ford, IBM, Xerox, and Coca-Cola, and employed a million people.) Bell moved to Washington, D.C., became — Bill Bryson

I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and Liberals at bay. And the nation free. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Barack Obama's vision of America is one in which a President of the United States can fire the head of General Motors, tell banks how to bank, control the medical system and take charge of all sorts of other activities for which neither he nor other politicians have any expertise or experience. — Thomas Sowell

The subject of my work has a lot to do with general, artistic matters, questions like: What is creativity? Where do we come from? What are our motors? What is coincidence? What is logic? — Alva Noto

With my luck, if I ever invested in General Motors, they'd bust it to Corporal! — Robert Orben

And so we said to General Motors that the solution had to be a first year increase, which had to be sizeable because we had to catch up with the lost position as against the cost of living and we had to make some progress. — Leonard Woodcock

If General Motors is worth $60 a share to an investor it must be because the full common-stock ownership of this gigantic enterprise as a whole is worth 43 million (shares) times $60, or no less than $2,600 million. — Benjamin Graham

We just put General Motors in the hands of people who can't even run our own government. — Glenn Beck

Most Web activities do not generate jobs and revenue at the rate of past technological breakthroughs. When Ford and General Motors were growing in the early part of the twentieth century, they created millions of jobs and helped build Detroit into a top-tier U.S. city. Today, Facebook creates a lot of voyeuristic pleasure, but the company doesn't employ many people and hasn't done much for Palo Alto; a lot of the "work" is performed more or less automatically by the software and the servers. You could say that the real work is done by its users, in their spare time and as a form of leisure. Web 2.0 is not filling government coffers or supporting many families, even though it's been great for users, programmers, and some information technology specialists. Everyone on the Web has heard of Twitter, but as of Fall 2010, only about three hundred people work there. — Tyler Cowen

Engineers at General Motors have developed a revolutionary new engine whose only function is to lubricate itself. — George Carlin

No manufacturer, from General Motors to the Little Lulu Novelty Company, would think of putting a product on the market without benefit of a designer. — Raymond Loewy

The president of General Motors was in a foul humor. — Arthur Hailey

We went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I started at General Motors at 18 years old as a co-op student at the General Motors Institute, which is now Kettering. — Mary Barra

For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country. — Charles Erwin Wilson

Organizations like the church or General Motors promote a man up and up until he reaches a spot which he is obviously incapable of filling, and there they lay him to rest. — James A. Michener

If you've ever taken an economics course you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. I don't have to tell you, that's not what's done. If advertisers lived by market principles then some enterprise, say, General Motors, would put on a brief announcement of their products and their properties, along with comments by Consumer Reports magazine so you could make a judgment about it.

That's not what an ad for a car is - an ad for a car is a football hero, an actress, the car doing some crazy thing like going up a mountain or something. If you've ever turned on your television set, you know that hundreds of millions of dollars are spent to try to create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices - that's what advertising is. — Noam Chomsky

What really went wrong is that General Motors has had this philosophy from the beginning that what's good for General Motors is good for the country. So, their attitude was, 'We'll build it and you buy it. We'll tell you what to buy. You just buy it.' — Michael Moore

You could transfer Congress over to run Standard Oil or General Motors, and they would have both things bankrupt in two years. — Will Rogers

When I was research head of General Motors and wanted a problem solved, I'd place a table outside the meeting room with a sign: "Leave slide rules here." If I didn't do that, I'd find someone reaching for his slide rule. Then he'd be on his feet saying, "Boss, you can't do it." — Charles Kettering

Revitalizing General Motors is like teaching an elephant to tap dance. You find the sensitive spot and start poking. — Ross Perot

The late Alfred P. Sloan, Ir., long-time executive of General Motors Corporation, had a fivepoint "secret of success." It was: 1. Get the facts. 2. Recognize the equities of all concerned. 3. Realize the necessity of doing a better job every day. 4. Keep an open mind. 5. Work hard. — Alfred P. Sloan

You want to know whether we're better off? I've got a little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive! Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive! — Joe Biden

Well, as you know, General Motors does not make hybrids. Ford only made 4,000 hybrids last year. — Ed Markey

General Motors spends more on health care than steel. — Kathleen Sebelius

God is less careful than General Motors, for He floods the world with factory rejects. — Mignon McLaughlin

I might say that when the settlement was made the Nixon administration issued what they called a second inflation alert in which the General Motors settlement was branded as being inflationary and bad for the country. — Leonard Woodcock

I don't think I would have to run a campaign that's financed like General Motors. — John Bolton

General Motors, General Mills, General Foods, general ignorance, general apathy, and general cussedness elect presidents and Congressmen and maintain them in power. — Herbert M. Shelton

I will never get married to the head of General Motors. I will never be the wife of a superstar. For those women, their lives are somebody else's ... I will never be a 'Mrs. Blabidyblah!' — Stephanie Zimbalist

General Motors, ITT, and Ford come most readily to mind as having plants protected by Hitler, — Mark Kurlansky

Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in pay and benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM worker. Today the CEO of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred times the wages of his average employee. Indeed, the wealth of the Wal-Mart founder's family in 2005 was estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the bottom 40% of the US population: 120 million people. — Tony Judt

The size of General Motors is in the service not of monopoly or the economies of scale but of planning. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I came from an environment where if you see a snake, you kill it. At General motors, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is to hire a consultant on snakes. — Ross Perot

I hate to let people down. I was like that in sports and I was like that in comedy. I was like that at work. When I worked General Motors and stuff like that, when I say something, I mean it. — Bernie Mac

I don't hurt the industry. The industry hurts itself, by making so many lousy movies - as if General Motors deliberately put out a bad car. — Humphrey Bogart