Great Throughts Treasury

"There is a single reason why 99 out of 100 average business men never become leaders. That is their unwillingness to pay the price of responsibility. By the price of responsibility I mean hard driving, continual work... the courage to make decisions, to stand the gaff... the scourging honesty of never fooling yourself about yourself... And the grooves that lead to the heights are not made between nine and five. They are burned in by the midnight oil."

"A mind, if it be open, may change with each new day, abut the spirit and the heart are as unchanging as the tides."

"We wake up to find the whole world building competitive trade barriers, just as we found it a few years ago building competitive armaments. We are trying to reduce armaments to preserve the world solvency. We shall have to reduce competitive trade barriers to preserve the world's sanity. As between the two, trade barriers are more destructive than armaments and more threatening to the peace of the world."

"None think the great unhappy but the great."

"It takes vision and courage to create - it takes faith and courage to prove."

"There may be enough poetry in the whir of our machines so that our machine age will become immortal."

"Government means politics, and interference by government carries with it always the implication of coercion. We may accept the expanding power of bureaucrats so long as we bask in their friendly smile. But it is a dangerous temptation. Today politics may be our friend and tomorrow we may be its victims."

"Markets as well as mobs respond to human emotions; markets as well as mobs can be inflamed to their own destruction."

"The world does not owe men a living, but business, if it is to fulfill its ideal, owes men an opportunity to earn a living."

"The man who can put himself in the place of other men, who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about what the future has in store for him."

"What I am concerned about in this fast-moving world in a time of crises, both in foreign and domestic affairs, is not so much a program as a spirit of approach, not so much a mind as a heart. A program lives today and dies tomorrow. A mind, if it be open, may change with each new day, but the spirit and the heart are as unchanging as the tides."

"We are not to judge thrift solely by the test of saving or spending. If one spends what he should prudently save, that certainly is to be deplored. But if one saves what he should prudently spend, that is not necessarily to be commended. A wise balance between the two is the desired end."

"When boasting ends, there dignity begins."

"I resent at any time or at any place the attitude that the safety of this country depends on any man holding his job. No man has achieved that strength, and this country has not deteriorated to that weakness."

"I really believe that more harm is done by old men who cling to their influence than by young men who anticipate it."

"In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing."

"It is not the crook in modern business that we fear, but the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing."

"They build too low who build beneath the skies."