Businesspeople From The United States

"You have to stop thinking that you're in charge and start thinking that you're having a dance. We used to think we're smart [...] but nobody is smarter than the Internet. [...] One of the things we learned pretty early on is "Don't ever, ever try to lie to the Internet – because they will catch you. They will de-construct your spin. They will remember everything you ever say for eternity.""

"I'd like to thank Sony for their gracious hospitality, and for not repeatedly punching me in the face. If I seem a little nervous, it's because Kevin Butler was introduced to me backstage as the VP of sharpening things."

"C'mon, people, you can't show the player a really big bomb and not let them blow it up."

"This isn't working."

"The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels, I think It’s really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted."

"The original Half-Life took two years to create and Half-Life 2 took six years. That means Half-Life 3 would ship in approximately 2022. By which time we'll all be retired. With episodic content we can answer everybody's questions about what happened at the end of Half-Life 2, and we can do it in 18 months rather than 18 years."

"George Lucas should have distributed the "source code" to Star Wars. Millions of fans would create their own movies and stories. Most of them would be terrible, but a few would be genius."

"We're way closer to The Matrix than people realize, It's not going to be The Matrix—The Matrix is a movie and it misses all the interesting technical subtleties and just how weird the post-brain-computer interface world is going to be.It turns out that your brain has really good interfaces for some things and really badly designed, kludge-y interfaces for doing other things. And, the fact that your immune systems gets involved in your perceptions of temperature means there are all sorts of weird parts of your brain that participate in the sensation of being cold, whereas things like your motor cortex or your visual cortex are much more tractable problems. And that's what I mean. We're going to learn a lot as we proceed as to what things work and what things don't, what things are valuable to people and what things are party tricks that don't really matter in the long run ... I think that it's an extinction-level event for every entertainment form that's not thinking about this."

"The real world will feel dull, flat, colorless, blurry compared to the experiences you'll be able to create in people's brains. ...People are going to decide for themselves if they want to do it"

"We made a mistake lowering the voting age to 18. I think it happened basically out of guilt."

"Rally round the flag, boys— Give it to the breeze! That's the banner that we bore On the land and seas. Brave hearts are under it, Let the traitors brag, Gallant lads, fire away! And fight for the flag. Their flag is but a rag— Ours is the true one; Up with the Stars and Stripes! with the new one! Let our colors fly, boys— Guard them day and night; For victory is liberty, And God will bless the right."

"Is n’t God upon the ocean Just the same as on the land?"

"The skipper stormed and tore his hair, Hauled on his boots and roared at Marden— "Nantucket's sunk and here we are Right over old Marm Hackett’s garden!""

"Oh, to be home again, home again, home again! Under the apple-boughs, down by the mill!"

""I’m an owl; you’re another. Sir Critic, good day." And the barber kept on shaving."

"Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch, The owl very gravely got down from his perch, Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic (Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic."

"The United States economy is like a poker game where the chips have become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and where the other fellows can stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit runs out the game will stop."

"On occasion, people in power will sing a new tune once absolutely compelled to do so. In 1967 Henry Ford II declared angrily that if the government's safety standards were imposed, it "would shut down the industry." A decade later, in 1977, on NBC's Meet the Press, Mr. Ford recognized, "We wouldn't have had the kinds of safety built into automobiles that we have had unless there had been a federal law.""

"Airbags are a lot of baloney, no matter what Allstate says or no matter what the DOT says."

"Nothing is unfair in politics"

"Screen credit is valuable only when it's given you. If you're in a position to give yourself credit, you don't need it."

"There are two kinds of men who never amount to much: those who cannot do what they are told and those who can do nothing else."

"It's the new management's job to look at the world as it changes, and how do we look at change and take advantage of change, rather than put our head in the ground."

"The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who's winning an argument with a liberal."

"Pierre Trudeau was too much of a professional politician to be described as a good man, nor, it can be argued despite much publicity to the contrary, was he a particularly clever or even wise one. But he was a great man, perhaps the greatest Canada has produced in this century."

"Trudeauism: The Highest Form of Liberalism"

"The best part of being on the stage was that I didn't have to go back to that mean Mr. Mayer after he tried to ruin my career."

"Don't make these pictures any better. Just keep them the way they are."

"The number one book of the ages was written by a committee, and it was called The Bible."

"You know how I'm smart? I got people around me who know more than I do."

"I will only make pictures that I won't be ashamed to have my children see."

"Marvin Bower was a great leader and a great teacher. He did not believe leadership could be taught, but he did believe it could be learned. I had the opportunity to observe his deep personal influence on legions of business people and colleagues one by one. For that was his way. One by one."

"Marvin Bower, Rhode Island Alpha '25, was honored by Fortune Magazine this year when he was elected to the National Business Hall of Fame. He is considered the "father of modern management consulting."

"... for all the reasons we have discussed in these pages, judgments brought to the board by leaders are likely to be better than those coming to the board in a command company. Moreover, the effective working relationships between leaders and directors in a leadership company further ensures the exercise of sound judgments for such momentous decisions ..."

"I believe that in a leadership company most people will like their work. But the company will be an even more enjoyable place to work if the culture is designed to make it that way. Leading fosters a working atmosphere that stimulates an open exchange of ideas and fosters dissent. People should show a genuine concern for one another and treat one another with fairness, as peers and friends. With such an atmosphere it should be a pleasure to come to work."

"The difference between a leadership and a command company can be very great indeed, because in a hierarchical situation, people who have concerns about reactions against themselves would simply not put forward negative information."

"In large-scale organizations, the factual approach must be constantly nurtured by high-level executives. The more layers of authority through which facts must pass before they reach the decision maker, the greater the danger that they will be suppressed, modified, or softened, so as not to displease the "brass". For this reason, high-level executives must keep reaching for facts or soon they won't know what is going on. Unless they make visible efforts to seek and act on facts, major problems will not be brought to their attention, the quality of their decisions will decline, and the business will gradually get out of touch with its environment."

"The business with high ethical standards has three primary advantages over competitors whose standards are lower:"

"Fourteen basic and well-known managing processes make up the components from which a management system for any business can be fashioned."

"A business of high principle attracts high-caliber people more easily, thereby gaining a basic competitive and profit edge."

"A business of high principle generates greater drive and effectiveness because people know that they can do the right thing decisively and with confidence."

"Decisions should be based on facts, objectively considered — what I call the fact-founded, thought-through approach to decision making."

"People should be judged on the basis of their performance, not nationality, personality, education, or personal traits and skills."

"I believe that leaders and leadership teams working together in a proper design will run the business more effectively than by hierarchical, command-and-control managing. But I can't prove that. And there are no models."

"The performance of business leaders during the next decade will play a major role in determining not only business but political and social trends for a long time to come. Here are some of the principal reasons: - Business leaders control the economic well-being of and stockholder. - The course of business shapes public opinion. - Business leaders shape public opinion. So, in addition to his or her prime responsibility of managing his or her enterprise at a profit, the business leader of today is faced with new and larger responsibilities. And, at the same time, the job of managing his or her enterprise at a profit is increasing in complexity. Consequently, the imposition of additional responsibilities makes the nation’s task of developing an adequate number of properly equipped executive leaders a staggering one indeed."

"If I had a brick for every time I’ve repeated the phrase Quality, Service, Cleanliness and Value, I think I’d probably be able to bridge the Atlantic Ocean with them."

"Palm founder Jeff Hawkins used to carry around a wooden mock-up of the PalmPilot to show what a smart device could look like, thus communicating his vision of the future."

"Jeff Hawkins ... has served as inspiration to countless AI researchers, for which I give him a lot of credit."

"The cells in your head are reading these words. Think how remarkable that is."

"The brain is an organ that builds models and makes creative predictions, but its models and predictions can as easily be specious as valid. Our brains are always looking at patterns and making analogies. If correct correlations cannot be found, the brain is more than happy to accept false ones. Pseudoscience, bigotry, faith, and intolerance are often rooted in false analogy."