Quotes & Sayings About Great Executives

There is a decided prejudice on the part of the general public against being piloted by a woman, and as great an aversion, partially because of this, by executives of those companies whose activities require employing pilots. — Louise Thaden

Senior men have no monopoly on great ideas. Nor do creative people. Some of the best ideas come from account executives, researchers and others. Encourage this, you need all the ideas you can get. — David Ogilvy

All the old great companies were run by guys who knew what an animator meant, and guys who knew how to draw. All the companies today are run by executives. — Ralph Bakshi

In some circles emptiness is even made a goal to be sought after, under the guise of being "adaptable." Nowhere is this illustrated more arrestingly than in an article in Life Magazine entitled "The Wife Problem."* Summarizing a series of researches which first appeared in Fortune about the role of the wives of corporation executives, this article points out that whether or not the husband is promoted depends a great deal on whether his wife fits the "pattern." Time was when only the minister's wife was looked over by the trustees of the church before her husband was hired; now the wife of the corporation executive is screened, covertly or overtly, by most companies like the steel or wool or any other commodity the company uses. She must be highly gregarious, not intellectual or conspicuous, and she must have very "sensitive antennae" (again that radar set!) so that she can be forever adapting. — Rollo May

We really think highly of the executives at SBC. And Microsoft is one of the great companies of the 21st century. It is in all of our best interests to work together. In this new wave of technology, you can't do it all yourself; you have to form alliances. — Carlos Slim

Democrats are liberals, and - to their profound embarrassment - liberalism is an old, white European male political philosophy. Liberalism is based on the thought of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine, and - oh, the shame of it - slave-owning, woman-exploiting Thomas Jefferson. Liberalism is deeply confusing to liberals. America's first great liberal populist was Andrew Jackson, perpetrator of the genocidal Trail of Tears and annihilator of the Second Bank of the United States and hence of centralized economic control. (Sadly, Jackson put an end to the Second Bank of the United States before Hillary Clinton had a chance to claim large lecture fees for speaking to its executives.) Plus, liberalism is painfully unhip. Say "Great Society" to today's with-it young Democratic voters and they hear air quotes around the "Great." LBJ — P. J. O'Rourke

Early in my career when we went to golf tournaments and charity dinners I noticed businessmen and executives would give the players their cards. Well, they're giving you their cards for a reason. I said to my wife, 'All the guys get these cards and then when they get to the parking lot they rip them up or throw them away. It's really weird.' My wife .. said maybe you should just sign a picture and mail it to them. You know, 'Great playing golf with you,' or whatever. So, I did and lo and behold some of those guys I sent pictures to way back then are now CEOs at big companies. — Tie Domi

Successful salesmen, authors, executives and workmen of every sort need patience. The great liability of youth is not inexperience but impatience. — William Feather

Sports executives are great at convincing themselves whatever they believe is right and simply has to be. — Michael Wilbon

There is a lot of incredible talent out there, however, talent alone is not enough. Being a great singer does not matter, if you are not singing great songs. Having great songs will not be obvious to record executives if they are not professionally produced. Consistently performing those songs extremely well is essential. — Wendy Starland

The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it. — James C. Collins

The legislator is an indispensable guardian of our freedom. It is true that great executives have played a powerful role in the development of civilization, but such leaders appear sporadically, by chance. They do not always appear when they are most needed. The great executives have given inspiration and push to the advancement of human society, but it is the legislator who has given stability and continuity to that slow and painful progress. — J. William Fulbright

Women occupy, in great masses, the 'household tasks' of industry. They are nurses but not doctors, secretaries but not executives, researchers but not writers, workers but not managers, bookkeepers but not promoters. — Vivian Gornick

Great companies have been reduced by hiring executives that don't work out. — Dylan Smith

I believe benchmarking best practices can open people's eyes as to what is possible, but it can also do more harm than good, leading to piecemeal copying and playing catch-up. As one seasoned Toyota manager commented after hosting over a hundred tours for visiting executives, "They always say 'Oh yes, you have a Kan-Ban system, we do also. You have quality circles, we do also. Your people fill out standard work descriptions, ours do also.' They all see the parts and have copied the parts. What they do not see is the way all the parts work together." I do not believe great organizations have ever been built by trying to emulate another, any more than individual greatness is achieved by trying to copy another "great person. — Peter M. Senge

On July 6, he gave a speech to newspaper and television executives at the great columned building housing the National Archives and the original copy of the Constitution of the United States. "When I see those columns," he said, "I think of what happened to Greece and Rome." "They lost their will to live," he said. "They became subject to the decadence that destroys civilization. The United States is reaching that period. — Tim Weiner

For corporations to be bedfellows with the arts is good business for both. The architecture that houses a company is a more visible statement than the president's in the annual report. Ditto interiors, particularly of offices and sometimes, dramatically, in plants. For solvent businesses, support of community cultural undertakings in music, drama, dance creates great goodwill. Also, the existence of such activities is often important to the executives and their families that companies want to keep or attract to keep. — Malcolm Forbes

It is a great mistake for presidents and other leading executives of organizations having branches throughout the country to chain themselves to their desks at headquarters and send out rigid instructions to those in charge of distant branches and offices. Because a man sits in a palatial office in New York or Chicago or Philadelphia or Detroit and draws a big salary, it does not necessarily follow that he knows better than the man on the spot what ought to be done ... Paul, Caesar, Napoleon did not merely sit at home and issue long-range instructions. — B.C. Forbes

He testified that when you looked at it through the eyes of 'let's do it', the costs were very small. They were less than they'd had to spend to host a convention of transportation executives. The cost was not that great. — Major Owens

In government, our chief executives have been lawyers. The great majority of our cabinets and congresses are and have been men trained in the law. They have provided the leadership and the statecraft and the store of strength when it was needed. — Robert Kennedy

- As the poet Hebbel noted, "Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion." Executives know their development teams need to be passionate about their projects; otherwise, the projects and the company will remain mediocre. — Anonymous

Christ, it is sad, sad to see on quite a few of these faces - young ones particularly - a glum, defeated look. Why do they feel this way about their lives? Sure, they are underpaid. Sure, they have no great prospects, in the commercial sense. Sure, they can't enjoy the bliss of mingling with corporation executives. But isn't it any consolation to be with students who are still three-quarters alive? Isn't it some tiny satisfaction to be of use, instead of helping to turn out useless consumer goods? Isn't it something to know that you belong to one of the few professions in this country which isn't hopelessly corrupt? — Christopher Isherwood

I don't understand executives that pit women against each other, the fact that they brought in 'Body of Proof,' Dana Delaney is a friend of mine, and the two of us were just rolling our eyes, it's like, of course, you finally have two great female leads and you're going to put us on against each other. — Julianna Margulies

Would movie moguls release a film portraying Adolph Hitler as a great benefactor of the Jews? Hardly. Would they release a movie if the black community found it to be highly disparaging? No way. You better believe these executives would also think long and hard before they released a movie offensive to American Indians, Muslims homosexuals or virtually any affinity group. Yet, to most movie industries a film which offends millions of Christians is fine and dandy. — Donald Wildmon

I have very good executives and great children. They're very good. — Donald Trump

Yet even among those who are not economically poor, work remains, as a matter of experience, a great burden. Those whose work consists of serving the great corporate principalities, for instance, are subject to dehumanized, enslaving, frequently idolatrous claims over their lives. Does anyone seriously suppose that the high-ranking executives involved in the price-fixing scandals in some of the great corporations in this country are anything but prisoners, no more truly free than serfs, confined and conformed to the interest of the principalities they serve? — William Stringfellow

Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles oh, damn their measured merriment. — Sinclair Lewis

One of the great things about Silicon Valley is, irrespective of how competitive you might be with another company or how closely you might be working with that company, there's a great sort of give and take, and camaraderie from - between - some of the executives in the valley and some of the other investors in the valley. — Dick Costolo