"These two attitudes, the attitude of deifying mere efficiency, mere success, without regard to the moral qualities lying behind it, and the attitude of disregarding efficiency, disregarding practical results, are the Scylla and Charybdis between which every earnest reformer, every politician who desires to make the name of his profession a term of honor instead of shame, must steer. He must avoid both under penalty of wreckage, and it avails him nothing to have avoided one, if he founders on the other. People are apt to speak as if in political life, public life, it ought to be a mere case of striving upward — striving toward a high peak. The simile is inexact. Every man who is striving to do good public work is traveling along a ridge crest, with the gulf of failure on each side — the gulf of inefficiency on the one side, the gulf of unrighteousness on the other."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Theodore Roosevelt, in "Latitude and Longitude among Reformers" in the "Century" (June 1900), later in The Strenuous Life : Essays and Addresses (1900)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Efficiency
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Efficiency
30 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Efficiency →
Related Quotes
"There is an efficiency case for an institutional welfare state."
"National politics have from the start aimed primarily at efficiency — that is, at the successful use of the force res…"
"Much is said about scientific management of work. It is a narrow view which restricts the science which secures effic…"
"Modern institutions are transparently purposive and that we are in the midst of an evolutionary progression toward mo…"
"It is fundamentally the confusion between effectiveness and efficiency that stands between doing the right things and…"
"Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether i…"
"The aim of our efficiency has not been to produce goods, but to harvest dollars... The production of goods was always…"
"The increase of this efficiency is essentially the problem of the manager, and the amount to which it can be increase…"
"The efficiency of a group working together is directly related to the homogeneity of the work they are performing."
"First, the welfare state is not a subject apart, but fits naturally into the framework of economic analysis. Secondly…"