April 4 to Septmber 19, 1999
featuring Wilson Sloan, Michael Grant, The Inmate, Stanislaw Lem, Sebastian De Grazia, Gordon MacKenzie, Aristotle, Thomas Merton, Alexis de Touqueville, Earl Wantland former President of Tektronix, Roy Schmidt, Eric Hoffer, Daniel Boorstein, Louis Adamic, Miguel de Unamuno, Thomas Moore, John Stuart Mill, John Brown, Norman Maclean, German Military Folklore and William James
19 September 1999
"I must be getting old or something--I'm beginning realize my limitations. I'm not a very good administrator--not compared to guys like Hopkins and Ogden. I never will be, and the main reason is, I don't want to be. This sounds like a silly way to put it, but I don't think you can get to be a top administrator without working every week end for half your life, and I'd just as soon spend my week ends with you and the kids."
Wilson, Sloan, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Simon and Schuster, New York, N.Y., 1955, pg. 250.
12 September 1999
. . . although absolute power no doubt sometimes proved a corrupting influence [to the 12 Caesars of the Roman Empire beginning with Julius and ending with Domitian], Lord Acton might usefully, though less elegantly, have rewritten his assertion in the following terms: overwork combined with fear tends to corrupt and continual overwork and fear corrupt absolutely . . .
Grant, Michael, The Twelve Caesars, unabridged narration on cassette by Nelson Runger, Recorded Books, Inc., Prince Frederick, MD, tape 8, side 2.
5 September 1999
In their quest to "live life to the fullest" many people miss the very things that make life full."
The Inmate
29 August 1999
People streamed down the escalators to the lower levels; everyone was in a hurry, only I had time.
Lem, Stanislaw, Return from the Stars, translated by Barbara Marszal and Frank Simpson, A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, San Diego, New York, London, 1989, pg. 62.
22 August 1999
To keep Americans away from things one would have to eliminate advertising and offer them another authority to guide their free time. Advertising interests are formidable in themselves. And, of course, in back of them stands business.
De Grazia, Sebastian, Of Time, Work and Leisure, Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1994, pg. 353.
15 August 1999
To find Orbit around a corporate Hairball is to find a place of balance where you benefit from the physical, intellectual and philosophical resources of the organization without becoming entombed in the bureaucracy of the institution.
MacKenzie, Gordon, Orbiting The Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace, Penguin Putnam Inc., New York, N.Y., 1998, pg. 33.
1 August 1999
Courage and endurance are required for business and philosophy for leisure, temperance and justice for both, and more especially in times of peace and leisure, for war compels men to be just and temperate, whereas the enjoyment of good fortune and the leisure which comes with peace tend to make them insolent.
Aristotle, The Works of Aristotle: Volume II, in Great Books of the Western World, Mortimer J. Adler, William Gorman, et. al., Editors, William Benton, Publisher, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, 1988, Vol. 9. pg. 539.
18 July 1999
Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the best of intentions a spiritual man finds himself exhausted and deadened and debased by the constant noise of machines and loudspeakers, the dead air and the glaring lights of offices and shops, the everlasting suggestions of advertising and propaganda.
Merton, Thomas, No Man Is An Island, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, San Diego, New York, London, 1983, pp. 108-109.
11 July 1999
When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but, at the same time, he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work. He every day becomes more adroit and less industrious; so that it may be said of him, that, in proportion as the workman improves, the man is degraded. . . .When a workman has spent a considerable portion of this existence in this manner, his thoughts are forever set upon the object of his daily toil; his body has contracted certain fixed habits, which it can never shake off: in a word, he no longer belongs to himself, but to the calling which he has chosen. It is in vain that laws and manners have been at pains to level all the barriers round such a man, and to open to him on every side a thousand different paths to fortune; a theory of manufactures more powerful than manners and laws binds him to a craft, and frequently to a spot which he cannot leave: it assigns to him a certain place in society, beyond which he cannot go: in the midst of universal movement, it has rendered him stationary.
In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is more extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more narrow-minded, and more dependent.
Alexis de Touqueville, Democracy in America, translated by Henry Reeve, revised by Francis Bowen, Edited and abridged by Richard D. Heffner, A Mentor Book, New American Library, 1984, pp. 217-218.
4 July 1999
A lot of people, especially folks that aren't very secure, have a tendency to restrict the flow of knowledge, because it is a power source. And if you keep people uninformed, you keep them vulnerable and insecure and therefore not very aggressive, and with an unwillingness to question what's going on.
Earl Wantland former President of Tektronix, quoted in A Great Place to Work by Robert Levering, Random House, New York, 1988, pg. 74
27 June 1999
"I don't take the job home with me. When I worked in the office, my wife would say, 'What was the matter with you last night? You laid there and your fingers were drumming the mattress.' That's when I worked in the office. The bookkeeping and everything else, it was starting to play on my nerves. Yeah, I prefer laboring to bookkeeping."
Roy Schmidt, a garbage man quoted in Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do,by Studs Terkel, Ballantine Books, New York, N.Y., 1990, pg. 150.
20 June 1999
What strikes me again and again is the number of excellent people, people of gentle character and inner gracefulness, one meets on the waterfront. I spent some time on the last job with Ernie and Mac, two elderly fellows I have known slightly. I found myself thinking what fine persons the two are--generous, competent, and intelligent. I have watched them tackle jobs not only intelligently but with striking originality. And all the time they work as if at play.
Eric Hoffer, Working and Thinking on the Waterfront
12 June 1999
A corporation which decides to rebuild its image has decided less on a change of heart than on a change of face.
Daniel J. Boorstein, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
Corporations have hearts?
6 June 1999
Indeed, it can scarcely be said that corporations were managed by men. They were operated almost purely by policy, which soon jelled into tradition, and which had little, if any, consideration for the human elements in business.
Louis Adamic, quoted in American Labor: A Pictorial Social History, by M. B. Schnapper
31 May 1999
Get rich! Fine! And afterwards, when we are rich?
Miguel de Unamuno, "Popular Materialism" in Perplexities and Paradoxes
23 May 1999
They never force people to work unnecessarily, for the main purpose of their whole economy is to give each person as much time free from physical drudgery as the needs of the community will allow, so that he can cultivate his mind- which they regard as the secret of a happy life.
Thomas More, Utopia16 May 1999
It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement.
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
Try explaining that to a CEO . . . or a politician.
9 May 1999
The speed of modern life is out of synchronization with the human body. If we could slow our lives down a little, think of quality before quantity, there would be more time to savor the pleasant things before we are forced to rush on to something else.
John Brown, a chairmaker, "Good Work," Fine Woodworking,Nov/Dec 1997
2 May 1999
Clearly by now it was one of those days when the world outside wasn't going to let me do what I really wanted to do--catch a big Brown Trout and talk to my brother in some helpful way.
Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It
25 April 1999
The Officers labeled their latrine, "For the Officers." The enlisted countered by labeling theirs, "For the other assholes."
German Military folklore, quoted in Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder18 April 1999
We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking ambition.
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
11 April 1999
A typical corporate video is like a typical Hollywood sex scene: everybody looks good, everybody's making noise, but nobody's saying anything.
The Inmate
4 April 1999
The upshot was--as the professor put it-- that what was to have been controlled, controlled us. No one, however, would admit this, and of course the next, logical step was the declaration that things were exactly the way they ought to be.Stanislaw Lem, The Star Diaries
Quotes Home | Home | Back to Top | Contact The Inmate
http://www.corporateasylum.com/thoughtsarchives.html
Copyright 1999-2004 The Corporate Asylum all rights reserved
Web Design by Sweet Thursday Web Development(Contact Me) / Last Revised Auagust 1, 2004