Great Throughts Treasury

"If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate."

"A man is known by the company he keeps. A company is known by the men it keeps."

"Advertising has illuminated the path of progress. . . . In building up desire, advertising has spurred new endeavors. It is their creative work, their dynamic presentations of products, their ability to teach and educate which have made each of us desire better things. And in the fulfillment of our desires, we have reached for and attained higher pinnacles in living standards and a clearer conception of the values of life itself."

"A manager is an assistant to his men."

"Business is a game, the greatest game in the world if you know how to play it."

"All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work."

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."

"Encouragement isa a necessary part of supervision."

"Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all... good design must primarily serve people."

"Follow the path of the unsafe independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity."

"Don't make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up."

"Every time we've moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block, and try something new."

"God made man of the dust of the earth and man makes a god of the dust of the earth"

"Good design is good business. Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all ... good design must primarily serve people."

"I have made a good many predictions about the future of our business and I have been wrong every time because I have always underestimated its possibilities."

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

"If joining IBM was commitment, not employment, and the company engaged in something more than business, it had a right to demand of its men unconditional loyalty, Watson believed."

"He would say over and over again that the company was not merely a business, but "an institution that will go on forever.""

"If a man goes to work in the right spirit, work is no hardship."

"If we do not take advantage of our opportunities, it is our own fault."

"If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work."

"If you are loyal you are successful, ruminated the company paper at one time. All useful work is raised to the plane of art when love for the task-loyalty-is fused with the effort. Loyalty is the great lubricant of life. It saves the wear and tear of making daily decisions as to what is best to do. The man who is loyal to his work is not wrung nor perplexed by doubts, he sticks to the ship, and if the ship founders he goes down like a hero with colors flying at the masthead and the band playing."

"If you aren't playing well, the game isn't as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid."

"If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for"

"In order to be a success in business, there is one thing you must do. You cannot be successful without it. That is WORK. I have not told you anything new. Everyone knows that you cannot be successful in anything without work. Why does not everyone work? Because some lack the one thing that makes men want to work - ENTHUSIASM. That is something no one can give you. You must acquire it yourself, and the only way that you can become enthusiastic about anything is to have a thorough KNOWLEDGE of it. You have never seen an enthusiastic man who was lazy."

"It is my personal opinion that we are going to recover from this depression and establish on a sounder and better basis, and we are going to reach greater heights of prosperity than ever before in this country. Now, that is just my personal opinion, but it is based on history, because that is what has happened following every depression. As we read the history of the various depressions we find that the people all felt about them just as we do about this one. One of the reasons we go ahead rapidly after coming out of a depression is that inventive genius and business talents have been put to a test, and they have always devised new and better ways to do things."

"It is better to aim at perfection and miss it than to aim at imperfection and hit it."

"It can't be done, engineers might tell him. It has to be done, Watson would order, and often it could be. With this approach Watson brought out the best in his men-in his engineers, for example. He believed that engineering, like salesmanship, depended not only on laws but on will. For him the first principle of science, as well as the first principle of the world of men, was enthusiasm. Build it, he would order his engineers arbitrarily. And when they did, the machine often seemed to be a triumph of Dale Carnegie over Newton."

"In every walk of life, the highest places and the greatest rewards go to those who have the courage to attempt and ability to achieve big things. That is true in science. It is true in government. It is true in business. And it is true in this organization. IBM leaders in the past have proved their worth by performance, just as they will in this sales campaign."

"Joining a company is an act that calls for absolute loyalty in big matters and little ones."

"It was necessary for us to discover greater powers of destruction than our enemies. We did. But after every war we have followed through with a new rise in our standard of living by the application of war-taught knowledge for the benefit of the world. It will be the same with the atomic bomb principles."

"Let them fear death who do not fear sin"

"Less than three weeks before his death, in one of Watson's last public statements about his company, he observed: It's this family spirit-combined with vision and faith-that has been responsible, perhaps more than anything else, for IBM's success."

"Knowledge without repentance will be but a torch to light men to hell"

"Life isn't all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman's education."

"Membership in the IBM family exacted certain standards of conduct. The reputation of the company was in the hands of everyone who worked for it, Watson insisted. Therefore, his employees were warned against doing anything, even in their private lives, which would be to the discredit of the organization."

"Make time your ally and time will make you."

"None of us can hope to get anywhere without character, moral courage and the spiritual strength to accept responsibility."

"Life itself is a matter of salesmanship."

"Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself."

"More than any other man, Mr. Edison lifted us out of the material surroundings of the Middle Ages. For most part, his inventions were spectacular in that they served to effect the emancipation of humanity and at the same time made possible mass production, greater factories, new and faster transportation methods, speedier distribution of commodities and a general increase in the happiness and higher standards of living for the peoples of the world. His inventions have provided employment directly for more than a million persons and many millions are employed because of their indirect benefits. It has been recorded that the investment value of all the undertakings rooted in his inventions equals the value of all the gold mined in the world since Columbus discovered America. Thomas A. Edison, whom we revered for his simplicity and his greatness, has passed on, but his name and his achievements remain to be magnified in the light of their untold benefits to future generations."

"Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops."

"Put First Things First! These four words cover an entire philosophy which can be applied with profit by every business leader, by every executive and by every employee."

"Point out to the men working with you and around you that we forgive thoughtful mistakes - that it is only the thoughtless mistakes that cause trouble. Tell them first to be sure they have thought about each proposition, then to go ahead."

"Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate and generous - not just to some people in some circumstances - but to everyone all the time."

"Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?"

"Praising God is one of the highest and purest acts of religion. In prayer we act like men; in praise we act like angels."

"Repentance is a grace of God's Spirit whereby a sinner is inwardly humbled and visibly reformed."

"Sin hath the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages"

"So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because that's where you will find success. On the far side of failure."