Tom Peters People Quotations

Business is about people. It's about passion. It's about bold ideas, bold small ideas or bold large ideas.

Community organizing is all about building grassroots support. It's about identifying the people around you with whom you can create a common, passionate cause. And it's about ignoring the conventional wisdom of company politics and instead playing the game by very different rules.

We found that the most exciting environments, that treated people very well, are also tough as nails. There is no bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo... excellent companies provide two things simultaneously: tough environments and very supportive environments.

I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens.

I'm most proud of the fact that we've increased our Disaster Assistance Team from three to 50 people. We recently set a goal to recruit 100 more people to be on the Disaster Services Human Resources Team that can be called out of the area.

Only pissed-off people change the world.

When you choose a managerial path, you are choosing to devote your life to people. Period.

The little people will get even, which is one of a thousand reasons why they are not little people at all. If you're a jerk as a leader, you will be torpedoed. And usually it won't be by your vice presidents; it will be on the loading dock at 3am when no supervisors are around.

The common wisdom is that ... managers have to learn to motivate people. Nonsense. Employees bring their own motivation.

Hire disrespectful people.

If future competitiveness depends on treating people as an important part of the institution, the least respectful thing I can imagine doing to a human being is asking him to urinate in a cup.

Nearly 100% of innovation-from business to politics-is inspired not by "market analysis" but by people who are supremely pissed off by the way things are.

I don't want an epitaph on my gravestone that says, 'He would have pursued some big dreams in his life, but other people wouldn't let him.

The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.

Divas do it, golfers do it, pilots do it, violists do it, sprinters do it, soldiers do it, surgeons do it, astronauts do it...only business people think it isn't necessary to train.