Businessfolks not only have to pursue profit, but also avoid those
decisions that would make them look like total assholes in retrospect.
Historically these two vectors have had some fascinating interplay.
How 'bout just one more 5-o'clocker, ole buddy?
valis
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
--Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked
with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is
a fad that won't last out the year."
--The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value.
Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
--David Sarnoff's associates, in response to his urgings
for investment in the radio in the 1920s
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
--H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face
and not Gary Cooper."
--Gary Cooper on his decision not to take
the leading role in "Gone With The Wind"
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
--Decca Recording Co., rejecting the Beatles, 1962
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
--Lord Kelvin, president of The Royal Society, 1895
"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing,
even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about
funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our
salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we
went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you.
You haven't got through college yet.'"
--Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs,
on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested
in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
--Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
--Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut
from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon."
--Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon,
Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
--Bill Gates, 1981
_________________________________________________________________
