Thomas J. Watson Quotations

If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.

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.

Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all... good design must primarily serve people.

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.

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.

To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.

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?

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

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

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 of failure.

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

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

A manager is an assistant to his men.

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.

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

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.

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

The way to succeed is to double your error rate.

It is a common mistake to think of failure as the enemy of success. Failure is a teacher-a harsh one, but the best. Pull your failures to pieces looking for the reason. Put your failure to work for you.

Loyalty saves the wear and tear of making daily decisions as to what is best to do.

Failure is a teacher; a harsh one, but the best.

When asked how to achieve success more rapidly, came the quick reply, 'Double your failure rate'.

Success is on the far side of failure.