Principles | Maxires Training & Consulting

1. It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.

Alfred Adler (1870-1937) Austrian psychologist and psychiatrist. Quoted in Alfred Adler (Phyllis Bottome; 1939)

2. Either lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Anonymous. Sign on the desk of broadcasting executive Ted Turner. Fortune (January 5, 1987)

3. PRINCIPLE, n. A thing which too many people confuse with interest.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) U.S. journalist and writer. The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

4. It is better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies.

Arthur Calwell (1896-1973) Australian politician. Attrib.

5. This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: first, to set an example of modest unostentatious living…to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so, to consider all surplus revenues…as trust funds which he is strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner…best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community.

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) U.S. industrialist and philanthropist. Summing up his philosophy. The Gospel of Wealth (1889)’6 Human beings possess the potential to be educated for values.

K. Chakraborty (b.1957) Indian academic. Management by Values: Towards Cultural Congruence (1991)

7. Influence, position and wealth are not given for nothing and we must try to use them as we would wish at the last we had done.

Jeremiah James Colman (1830-98) British food industry executive. 1856. Quoted in Enlightened Entrepreneurs (Ian Campbell Bradley; 1987), ch. 5

8. Here’s the rule for bargains: “Do other men, for they would do you.” That’s the true business percept.

Charles Dickens (1812-70) British novelist. Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44) ch. 11

9. The principle of maximum diversity operates both at the physical and at the mental level. It says that the laws of nature and the initial conditions are such as to make the universe as interesting as possible.

Freeman Dyson (b.1923) U.S. physicist. Infinite in All Directions (1988)

10. Management principles aim at the success of associations and at the satisfying of economic interests…The principle is the lighthouse fixing the bearings but it can only serve those who already know the way into port.

Henri Fayol (1841-1925) French business executive. General and Industrial Management (1916)

11. Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform withpout fail what you resolve.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) U.S. politician, inventor and journalist. The fourth of his 13 percepts for moral living. Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1793), pt. 2

12. Principles always become a matter of vehement discussion when practice is t an ebb.

George Gissing (1857-1903) British novelist. Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903)

13. Important principles may and must be inflexible.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) U.S. president. Said during his last public address. Speech, Washington D.C. ()April 11, 1865

14. I don’t believe in principles. Principles are only excuses for what we want to think or what we want to do.

Compton Mackenzie (1883-1972) British novelist and broadcaster. The Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett (1918)

15. Better service for the customer is for the good of the public, and this is the true purpose of enterprise.

Konosuke Matsushita (1894-1989) Japanese electronics executive, entrepreneur and inventor. Quest for Prosperity (1988)

16. You can’t learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) British novelist, short-story writer and dramatist. The Circle (1921)

17. Companies cannot deliver lasting change in isolation. Just as at the company level, we need a framework of clear principles to guide individual actions, so at the national and international level, we need a common ethical framework to inform and to guide the conduct of global business.

Mark Moody-Stuart (b.1940) British chairman of Anglo American and former chairman of Committee of Managing Directors Royal Dutch/Shell Group. Speech to the World Congress of the International Society of Business, Economics and Ethics. Sao Paolo, Brazil. “Putting Principles into Practice: The Ethical Challenge to Global Business” (July 19, 2000)

18. It may seem an obvious point but principles do not embed themselves in the minds of staff. To be effective, they have to be lived. It’s one thing to sign up for a set of principles, quite another to ensure that they are implemented and embedded in our corporate culture.

19. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that, when your position fails, your ego goes with it.

Colin Powell (b.1937) U.S. military leader and politician. Kept on his desk at the Pentagon. Attrib.

20. The man who accepts the laissez-faire doctrine would allow his garden to grow wild so that roses might fight it out with the weeds and the fittest might survive.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) British art critic and writer. Attrib.

21. The Great Principles on which we will build this Business are as everlasting as the Pyramids.

Gordon Selfridge (1858-1947) British retailer. Preliminary announcement, opening of Selfridge’s store, London (1909)

22. What is important is our openmindedness, our trust in our employees and distrust of dogma. We are neither socialist nor purely capitalist but we take the best of these failed systems and others to reorganize work.

Ricardo Semler (b.1959) Brazilian business executive and president of Semco. Maverick! (1993)

23. I’m very sympathetic to the view that the economy should spend more time in dealing with the predicament of people who are thrown into turmoil when things go wrong.

Amartya Sen (b.1933) Indian economist and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics. Interview, News Hour, Online Focus (PBS; October 15, 1998)

24. Business doesn’t have to choose between making profit and protecting the environment between economic success and ethical responsibility, between satisfying the customer and meeting the demands of other stakeholders. In other words, we don’t have to make a choice between profits and peinciples.

Jeroen Van Der Veer (b.1947) Dutch Advisory Director of Unilever, vice chairman of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and president of Royal Dutch Petroleum Company. Speech, “Earning the License to Grow” (November 26, 1999)