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In the firm expectation that when London shall be a habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul and Westminster Abbey shall stand shapeless and nameless ruins in the midst of an unpeopled marsh, when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some Transatlantic commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges and their historians.

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Aug 12, 2026

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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 tow
Thomas John Watson, Sr.

Quote Author: Thomas John Watson, Sr.

Thomas John Watson, Sr.

Thomas John Watson, Sr.

Thomas John Watson, Sr. (February 17, 1874 - June 19, 1956) was the president of International Business Machines (IBM), who oversaw that company's growth into an international force from the 1920s to the 1950s. Watson developed IBM's effective management style and turned it into one of the most effective selling organizations yet seen, based largely around punched card tabulating machines. A leading self-made industrialist, he was one of the richest men of his time and was called the world's greatest salesman when he died in 1956.

Other Thomas John Watson, Sr. Quotes

Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.

If you aren't playing well, the game isn't as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid.

Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.

It is better to aim at perfection and miss, than to aim at imperfection and hit it

Business is a game, the greatest game in the world if you know how to play it.

Within us all there are wells of thought and dynamos of energy which are not suspected until emergencies arise. Then oftentimes we find that it is comparatively simple to double or treble our former capacities and to amaze ourselves by the results achieved. Quotas, when set up for us by others, are challenges which goad us on to surpass ourselves. The outstanding leaders of every age are those who set up their own quotas and constantly exceed them.

Watson’s answer to a question about competition in his first company meeting, 1914, as the new president, of the CTR (Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company), the company that was to become IBM: '... the only way that we want you men to handle the competi

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 tow

A message regarding the annual convention of the Advertising Federation of America in NYC, June 14-18, 1931. Advertising has illuminated the path of progress.... In building up desire, advertising has spurred new endeavors. It is their creative work, their dynamic presentations of products, their ability to teach and educate which have made each of us desire better things. And in the fulfillment of our desires, we have reached for and attained higher pinnacles in living standards and a clearer conception of the values of life itself.

What synchronism means to a clock, a convention means to our organization; it enables those of us who are behind to catch up and get in step with the others.

A minute has no negative qualities; it can be made to yield something, but not nothing. Its yield is something beneficial, or something detrimental.

We must all consider ourselves as assistants, regardless of the titles we carry in our official capacities.

I believe in getting behind the individual and backing him up, helping him to strengthen himself, making him feel that there is someone endeavoring to help him, trying to be an assistant to him, and bringing out the best there is in him—in other words, teaching him to teach himself, and in that way strengthen the entire organization.

A message from Paris to demonstrate the International Radiotype at the National Business Show in NYC, October 16, 1933: We shall find ourselves in a better world than mankind has ever known.

None of us can hope to get anywhere without character, moral courage and the spiritual strength to accept responsibility.

Watson's motto at the first CTR conventions: Your company is your friend. That is my hope and aim and ambition.

Speech celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1933: It was courage, faith, endurance and a dogged determination to surmount all obstacles that built this bridge.

Watson clearly spelled out his attitude about drinking, prohibiting liquor at IBM functions, on IBM premises, for IBM purposes: You can mix your drinking with pleasure, but not with our business.

We are willing to spend any reasonable amount of money on education in our organization, because we have a group of men and women in our business who are constantly seeking knowledge, knowing that is the way to make themselves more valuable to the company and, automatically, more valuable to themselves. We are working out a plan that is going to take in everybody in the organization. We are going to have post graduate schools for our men in the field, and post graduate schools for our executives—and many of them.

Encouragement isa a necessary part of supervision.

When I speak about the future development of our business, I want to include every other business in the United States. In my judgment, every legitimate business in our country today has a far better future ahead of it than it has ever had before.

The success of every major executive depends on the men under him. Really successful men are pushed up, not pulled up.

Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?

Less than three weeks before his death, in one of Watson’s last public statements about his company, he observed: It's this family spirit—combined with vision and faith—that has been responsible, perhaps more than anything else, for IBM's success.

We must all take time to do enough thinking to formulate our own conclusions.

The future of this business is far beyond the vision of any of us.

The future is going to demand more of us.

A message sent to all members of the American Sales Organization at the opening of the IBM Election Prize Contest, September 1, 1932. In every walk of life, the highest places and the greatest rewards go to those who have the courage to attempt and ability to achieve big things. That is true in science. It is true in government. It is true in business. And it is true in this organization. IBM leaders in the past have proved their worth by performance, just as they will in this sales campaign.

He would say over and over again that the company was not merely a business, but 'an institution that will go on forever.'

The man who bases his actions on independent thought; who reflects and considers before doing anything, and whose judgments are arrived at through logic, is the man who will go farthest today.

A tribute, published October 22, 1931, to Thomas Alva Edison upon his death: THE passing of Thomas Alva Edison serves to direct our attention to the multitude of benefactions he bestowed upon all humanity during his many years of fruitful activity. It reminds us of the debt of gratitude we owe him as members of the human race. By his achievements, he laid the foundation for continued and greater development. His persistent efforts and indefatigable spirit multiplied many times the valuable opportunities for man, especially the young man. To each and every young man, Mr. Edison left a legacy of opportunities.

A tribute, published October 22, 1931, to Thomas Alva Edison upon his death: More than any other man, Mr. Edison lifted us out of the material surroundings of the Middle Ages. For most part, his inventions were spectacular in that they served to effect th

What we do with our leisure time has considerable bearing on what we accomplish during our working hours, and very largely determines the degree of our success, Young men who, like yourselves, devote a predetermined amount of their leisure hours to study and to serious thinking, are the men who are going to progress far and fast. The business leaders of tomorrow will be the young men of today—men like you who are preparing now for the great future which lies ahead. You may view the future with confidence, knowing that from the youth of today will emerge the leaders of tomorrow.

If joining IBM was commitment, not employment, and the company engaged in something more than business, it had a right to demand of its men unconditional loyalty, Watson believed.

'If you are loyal you are successful,' ruminated the company paper at one time. 'All useful work is raised to the plane of art when love for the task—loyalty—is fused with the effort. Loyalty is the great lubricant of life. It saves the wear and tear of making daily decisions as to what is best to do. The man who is loyal to his work is not wrung nor perplexed by doubts, he sticks to the ship, and if the ship founders he goes down like a hero with colors flying at the masthead and the band playing.'

Joining a company is an act that calls for absolute loyalty in big matters and little ones.

Watson himself said that when he was able to develop loyalty in men, ability followed. 'Joining a company is an act that calls for absolute loyalty in big matters and little ones,' he declared. Criticism, if necessary at all, was permitted only to superiors.

This kind of intense loyalty, then, became the well-spring of the IBM spirit, the family spirit as it was called.

If we do not take advantage of our opportunities, it is our own fault.

What we need in this country today is more courage and more belief in the things that we have.

We must never feel satisfied.

Princeton Universtiy, October 13, 1928: There is no saturation point in education if you follow sound principles, and you must apply this motto to business.... You must acquire wisdom in addition to knowledge. Wisdom is the power which enables you to use your knowledge to advantage.

The man who does not take pride in his own performance performs nothing in which to take pride.

We progress because we are willing to change.

Put First Things First! These four words cover an entire philosophy which can be applied with profit by every business leader, by every executive and by every employee.

There is more real need for the pioneering spirit today than ever before.

It is my personal opinion that we are going to recover from this depression and establish on a sounder and better basis, and we are going to reach greater heights of prosperity than ever before in this country. Now, that is just my personal opinion, but it is based on history, because that is what has happened following every depression. As we read the history of the various depressions we find that the people all felt about them just as we do about this one. One of the reasons we go ahead rapidly after coming out of a depression is that inventive genius and business talents have been put to a test, and they have always devised new and better ways to do things.

Life itself is a matter of salesmanship.

To the salesmen, Watson preached individuality and conservatism at the same time: Some men think that personality can be acquired by wearing unusual clothes or by saying something unusual. That is where many young men are wrong. Present your proposition in your own natural way, always keeping your personality behind your product.

Membership in the IBM family exacted certain standards of conduct. The reputation of the company was in the hands of everyone who worked for it, Watson insisted. Therefore, his employees were warned against doing anything, even in their private lives, which would be to the discredit of the organization.

If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.

Success is an individual proposition.

Princeton Universtiy, October 13, 1928: In order to be a success in business, there is one thing you must do. You cannot be successful without it. That is WORK. I have not told you anything new. Everyone knows that you cannot be successful in anything without work. Why does not everyone work? Because some lack the one thing that makes men want to work — ENTHUSIASM. That is something no one can give you. You must acquire it yourself, and the only way that you can become enthusiastic about anything is to have a thorough KNOWLEDGE of it. You have never seen an enthusiastic man who was lazy.

There is very little difference between the general manager, the sales manager, the factory manager, the office manager, the factory man, the office man and the salesman. We have different ideas and different work, but when you come down to it, there is j

It can’t be done, engineers might tell him. It has to be done, Watson would order, and often it could be. With this approach Watson brought out the best in his men—in his engineers, for example. He believed that engineering, like salesmanship, depended not only on laws but on will. For him the first principle of science, as well as the first principle of the world of men, was enthusiasm. Build it, he would order his engineers arbitrarily. And when they did, the machine often seemed to be a triumph of Dale Carnegie over Newton.

All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think.

Point out to the men working with you and around you that we forgive thoughtful mistakes — that it is only the thoughtless mistakes that cause trouble. Tell them first to be sure they have thought about each proposition, then to go ahead.

Time is your chief stock in trade.

Make time your ally and time will make you.

The time who utilizes every minute of every hour becomes a bigger, better being every minute.

Time is the substance of life — and recording it, the most important thing with which a man has to deal.

The business leaders of tomorrow will be the young men of today—men like you who are preparing now for the great future which lies ahead. You may view the future with confidence, knowing that from the youth of today will emerge the leaders of tomorrow.

We are all trying to learn how to do a better job.

The young man requires wisdom as well as knowledge.

If a man goes to work in the right spirit, work is no hardship.

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