1. Had the employers of past generations all of them dealt fairly with their employees there would have been no unions.
Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947) British prime minister. Speech to the British Parliament (November 10, 1932)
2. Get as much as possible done first by your subordinates. Pardon small offenses. Promote men of superior capacity.
Confucius (551-479 B.C.) Chinese philosopher, administrator, and writer. Analects (500? B.C.)
3. To be dilatory about giving orders, but to expect absolute punctually, that is called being a tormentor.
Confucius (551-479 B.C.) Chinese philosopher, administrator, and writer. Analects (500? B.C.)
4. Many employers are mercenarily minded, obsessed only with determination to roll up profits regardless of the suicidal consequences…without consciousness of their civic, social, patriotic responsibilities.
Bertie Charles Forbes (1880-1954) U.S. publisher and writer. Quoted in Forbes (1974)
5. A good paymaster never wants workmen.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician and writer. Gnomologia (1732), no. 168
6. I was extremely lucky that my first two bosses were people who believed in me as a person and felt that gender was totally irrelevant.
Nicola Horlick (b.1960) British fund manager. Can You Have It All? (1997)
7. There could be no worse friend to labour than the benevolent, philanthropic employer…sooner or later he will be compelled to close.
Lord Leverhulme (1851-1925) British entrepreneur, philanthropist, and cofounder of Unilever. Quoted in The History of Unilever (Charles Wilson; 1951)
8. It might be said that it is the ideal of the employer to have production without employees and the ideal of the employee is to have income without work.
- F. Schumacher (1911-77) British economist and conservationist. Quoted in “Sayings of the Week,” Observer (London) (May 4, 1975)
9. Just as an employer should believe it is his duty to promote good human relations, so too should he see it as his duty to pursue the best possible relationship with the community.
Marcus Sieff (1913-2001) British president of Marks & Spencer. Sieff on Management (1990)
10. Companies…have a hard time distinguishing between the cost of paying people and the value of investing in them.
Thomas A. Stewart (b.1948) U.S. journalist and author. Intellectual Capital (1997)
11. Each employee should receive every day clear-cut definite instructions as to what he is to do and how he is to do it, and these instructions should be exactly carried out, whether they are right or wrong.
- W. Taylor (1856-1915) U.S. engineer and author. The Principles of Scientific Management (1911)
12. You want to be recognized for your intellectual achievement, not for the fact that a bunch of day traders took your stock to a price that may or may not represent the real value of the firm.
Jay S. Walker, U.S. entrepreneur and founder of Priceline.com, C.E.O. of Walker Digital Corporation. “An Edison for a New Age?,” Forbes Global (Dyan Machan; 1999)
