Foresight is an imperfect thing – all prevision in economics is imperfect.
In 1736, Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette printed an apology for its irregular appearence because its printer was “with the Press, labouring for the publick Good, to make Money more plentiful.” The press was busy printing money.
I feel very angry when I think of brilliant, or even interesting, women whose minds are wasted on a home. Better have an affair. It isn’t permanent and you keep your job.
Who is king in the world of the blind when there isn’t even a one eyed man?
To add to the technostructure is to increase its power in the enterprise.
There is no name for all who participate in group decision-making or the organization which they form. I propose to call this organization the Technostructure.
The family which takes it mauve and cerise, air conditioned, power-steered, and power braked automobile out for a tour passes through cities that are badly paved, made hideous by litter, blighted buildings, billboards, and posts for wires that should long since have been put underground.
The massive reduction in risk that is inherent in the development of the modern corporation has been far from fully appreciated.
Even the word depression itself was the terminological product of an effort to soften the connotation of deep trouble. In the last century, the term crisis was normally employed. With time, however, this acquired the connotation of the misfortune it described.
Few economic problems, if any, are difficult of solution. The difficulty, all but invariably, is in confronting them. We know what needs to be done; for reasons of inertia, pecuniary interest, passion or ignorance, we do not wish to say so.
Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.
Humor is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention, but it has no persuasive value at all.
Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.
People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.
War remains the decisive human failure.
Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not.