Quotes by Thomas Watson

"Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate and generous - not just to some people in some circumstances - but to everyone all the time."
Thomas J. Watson
1874-1956, Founder of IBM

DEAR Tom: A thought that has occurred and reoccurred to me during my vacation is that some capable writer should do a biography of your life. This thought came to me because of my constant concern, publicly and privately, in the combating of the trend toward excessive paternalism in Government. As you know, I constantly preach individual initiative and acceptance of individual responsibility if we are in the long run to avert Statism. It seems to me that an account of your life would be a story of practicable achievement in the free enterprise system that would be far more effective in support of my argument than almost anything else could be. You have been known as one of the liberal leaders of industry; your own personal record as well as that of your company under your leadership should bring home many lessons to the participants in the industrial strife that now plagues the nation. There are undoubtedly many writers and scholars who would like to write a biography of you. It might even be done best as a "collaboration" effort by two or more writers. In any event, it is my thought that maybe you will be sufficiently interested to talk it over with me when I am in New York. Cordially, IKE

You work the first eight hours of each day for survival. Anything after that is an investment.

Wisdom is the power that enables us to use knowledge for the benefit of ourselves and others.

It was necessary for us to discover greater powers of destruction than our enemies. We did. But after every war we have followed through with a new rise in our standard of living by the application of war-taught knowledge for the benefit of the world. It will be the same with the atomic bomb principles.

All great questions of politics and economics come down in the last analysis to the decisions and actions of individual men and women. They are questions of human relations, and we ought always to think about them in terms of men and women-the individual human beings who are involved in them. If we can get human relations on a proper basis, the statistics, finance and all other complicated technical aspects of these questions will be easier to solve.

Don't make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.

The greatest asset of a man, a business or a nation is faith. The men who built this country and those who made it prosper during its darkest days were men whose faith in its future was unshakable. Men of courage, they dared to go forward despite all hazards; men of vision, they always looked forward, never backward. Christianity, the greatest institution humanity has ever known, was founded by twelve men, limited in education, limited in resources, but with an abundance of faith and divine leadership. The vision essential to clear thinking; the common sense needed for wise decisions; the courage of convictions based on facts not fancies; and the constructive spirit of faith as opposed to the destructive forces of doubt will preserve our Christian ways of life.

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity.

I think there's a world market for about five computers. Quoted by Charles Hard Townes In Martin Moskovits (Ed.), Science and Society, the John C. Polanyi Nobel Lareates Lectures, Anansi Press, Concord, Ontario, 1995, p 8.