Executive Life Quotes

My work begins at around 3 P.M. I wake up at around 2 P.M., watch my serial cassettes, jog for 30 minutes, get my make-up done, and plunge into meetings lined up with my directors. By evening, I finish all meetings and go to my office, where I handle any problems that may have arisen there.

Waste Management was based in Chicago, but I lived in Ft. Lauderdale and for 10 years had to commute to work - catch the 5 P.M. Sunday flight to Chicago and the midnight return flight on Friday.

I'm not an executive. I can do it, I have the mind for it, but there's a life that you have to lead, and you have to give up your creative freedom. That's what I don't want to give up.

Being a boss has been one of the greatest privileges and challenges of my life.

Bell Labs Cafeteria, New York, 1943: His high pitched voice already stood out above the general murmur of well-behaved junior executives grooming themselves for promotion within the Bell corporation. Then he was suddenly heard to say: "No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company."

Corporate types love to pretend their life is exciting. The whispers, fist-pumping and animated hand gestures are all designed to lift our job description from what it really is - that of an overpaid clerk

As any female executive with a family knows, you're making mental lists all through the night. You're often not sure you've managed to sleep at all.

I know that I'm freer as a hip-hopper than as an executive. Even as a black man, I enjoy more freedom as a hip-hopper than as a black man. That, s controversial to say, but it's the truth.

I hated being a public company CEO.