Best Thomas J. Watson Quotes

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.

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 is a world market for maybe five computers.

You don't hear things that are bad about your company unless you ask. It is easy to hear good tidings, but you have to scratch to get the bad news.

You have to have your heart in the business and the business in your heart.

Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.

The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it's very difficult to build and very easy to destroy. The essence of trust building is to emphasize the similarities between you and the customer.

THINK. Think about your appearance, associations, actions, ambitions, accomplishment.

The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas and enthusiasm.

Would you like me to give you a formula for... success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You're thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all... you can be discouraged by failure -- or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success. On the far side.

Every time we've moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block, and try something new.

Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops.

Solve it. Solve it quickly, solve it right or wrong. If you solve it wrong, it will come back and slap you in the face, and then you can solve it right. Lying dead in the water and doing nothing is a comfortable alternative because it is without risk, but it is an absolutely fatal way to manage a business.

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

If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.

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.