Alfred P. Sloan Quotes

The manager is to be blamed who distributes parts to his players which they are unable to act.

Most leadership strategies are doomed to failure from the outset. As people have been noting for years, the majority of strategic initiatives that are driven from the top are marginally effective - at best.

Not only didn't President Clinton bite the bullet, he didn't even bite the BB.

The fish rots from the head.

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.

The chances of catastrophe grow as organizations grow in number and size, and as internal communications become more time consuming and less intelligible.

I think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.

You learn nothing form your successes except to think too much of yourself. It is from failure that all growth comes, provided you can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, rise above it, and then try again.

Let's sink another drink, cause it will give me time to think.

I think failing is the best way to keep you grounded, curious, and humble. Success is dangerous because often you don't understand why you succeeded. You almost always know why you've failed. You have a lot of time to think about it.

We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped ... We suffer, therefore we think.

You've been thinking and I've been drinking.

If you're going to define me properly, you must think in terms of my failures as well as my successes.

Seven national crimes: 1. I don't think. 2. I don't know. 3. I don't care. 4. I am too busy. 5. I leave well enough alone. 6. I have no time to read and find out. 7. I am not interested.

I think every company is set by who founded it and who's in charge.

There are always things that I think I wish I could have done better.

People don't like to hear the truth out here cause the truth makes them think.

Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.

It looks a lot better from up here than it does down there, dont it? Yes. It does. There's a lot of things look better at a distance. Yeah? I think so. I guess there are. The life you've lived, for one. Yeah. Maybe what of it you aint lived yet, too.

Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn; and you are too sensible a man not to learn from this failure.

Sometimes when I play that old six-string, I think about you, wonder what went wrong.

Everyone you trust, everyone you think you can count on, will eventually disappoint you.

There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same.

We avoid the things that we're afraid of because we think there will be dire consequences if we confront them. But the truly dire consequences in our lives come from avoiding things that we need to learn about or discover.

Utopia is something that I think about in connection to an experience I had when I was a kid.