Stanley Bing > Quotes

“Businesspeople are like sharks, not just because we're gray and slightly oily, or because our teeth trail the innards of those we have eviscerated, but because we must move forward or die. ”
― Stanley Bing

“to Alexander the Great, who wept when there were no more worlds to conquer...”
― Stanley Bing, Sun Tzu Was a Sissy: Conquer Your Enemies, Promote Your Friends, and Wage the Real Art of War

“  Your goal is to reach the point where, no matter what happens in any given day, you just don’t give a shit.”
― Stanley Bing, Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up

“The truth is your servant, not your master. What is the truth, anyway? Does any of us really know what’s true? And is truth an absolute? Can’t things be sort of true? A little bit true? True in a deeper sense? True enough for military work? True for me, not for you? All too true?”
― Stanley Bing, What Would Machiavelli Do?: The Ends Justify the Meanness

“Solve problems, don’t create them. A huge number of very dislikable people have this aggravating habit of either creating problems they can then solve to the acclaim of the multitudes, or blowing up the size of issues and then handing them off to others. Try to not do that.”
― Stanley Bing, The Curriculum: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master of Business Arts

“Don’t you ever turn your back on me when I’m talking. CITIGROUP SENIOR EXECUTIVE JAMIE DIMON TO THE COMPANY’S VICE CHAIRMAN, DERYCK MAUGHAN, AT A BLACK-TIE DINNER. WHEN MAUGHAN TURNED AWAY FROM HIM, DIMON GRABBED HIM BY THE SHOULDERS AND SPUN HIM AROUND, POPPING A BUTTON FROM THE LAPEL OF HIS DINNER JACKET”
― Stanley Bing, Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up

“You get the picture. The marvelous thing about the human ego is that each one is slightly different. Deep inside you, there’s an enormously objectionable force yearning to leap forth and spew toxic goo all over the place. Let it flow!”
― Stanley Bing, What Would Machiavelli Do?: The Ends Justify the Meanness

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the principal difference between a dog and a man. MARK TWAIN”
― Stanley Bing, Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up

“Lying for a good business reason has become so prevalent that they had to invent a new, less censorious word for it. They call it positioning, and people get paid good money to do it, lucky for me.”
― Stanley Bing, What Would Machiavelli Do?: The Ends Justify the Meanness

“Today we will tackle the rudiments of getting people to buy the thing you’re selling. This is the heart of all activity of any kind in the human sphere. Along with the opposable thumb, this capacity—to sell others something they perhaps did not even know they wanted—is what separates Homo sapiens from its ancestors. Cows do not sell each other hay when they are hungry. Monkeys do not sell each other bananas. Only human beings can create the perception in other human beings that, even though they have showered, they still smell bad and need an underarm deodorant to set things right.”
― Stanley Bing, The Curriculum: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master of Business Arts

“That is the way of management from time immemorial, in medieval feudal states, communist dictatorships, and capitalist conference rooms alike. It is the way the powerful treat those less so, and it is the human condition.”
― Stanley Bing, Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up

“Anyhow, his basic philosophy was encapsulated in his famous statement, “I have an agreement with my people. They can say what they want. I can do what I want.”
― Stanley Bing, What Would Machiavelli Do?: The Ends Justify the Meanness

“Soldiering, my dear madam, is the coward’s art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm’s way when you are weak. That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms. George Bernard Shaw”
― Stanley Bing, Sun Tzu Was a Sissy: Conquer Your Enemies, Promote Your Friends, and Wage the Real Art of War

“TRUTH #2: Desire is the root of suffering. It is the desire to achieve, to live, to make things tolerable and pleasant, and even better, that creates untold pain in the lives of men and women. Want nothing, and you shall not be disappointed.”
― Stanley Bing, Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW”
― Stanley Bing, Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up

“There are those who treat every human interaction as a military engagement that could escalate into a potential battle leading to a nice, satisfying conflict that’s part of a war. There is a name for such people. They’re called assholes.”
― Stanley Bing, Sun Tzu Was a Sissy: Conquer Your Enemies, Promote Your Friends, and Wage the Real Art of War

“TRUTH #1: Work is suffering. The ability to boss other people around destroys much of human decency.”
― Stanley Bing, Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up

“So this smart, overpaid, sassy dude goes into his first major meeting with our then-CEO, Mark. He spends a fair amount of time shitting on the efforts of the corporation to date, and making a lot of noises about revamping the entire landscape and not with a spade and shovel, either, no, with some very heavy machinery. In the process, he evinces almost no particular knowledge of our company, and also manages to poop on the parades of everyone sitting around the table, including Mark’s.”
― Stanley Bing, What Would Machiavelli Do?: The Ends Justify the Meanness

“Your enemy is presenting you with new options and challenges every day. If you respond in a wholly expected way each time, you will become predictable, and a predictable enemy is much easier to defeat than one who treats his adversaries to a surprise on a regular basis.”
― Stanley Bing, Sun Tzu Was a Sissy: Conquer Your Enemies, Promote Your Friends, and Wage the Real Art of War

“Elephants are therefore left only the option of being afraid of little things that sneak up and surprise them. Such things include mice, loud noises, spreadsheet surprises and sudden disappointments, food that is on the menu but unavailable, unannounced visitors, word of the displeasure of a higher executive, bad news about the effect of NutraSweet on the human kidney.”
― Stanley Bing, Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up

“In terms of their power over other adults, the sheer force of their monomaniacal self-interest and their utter lack of shame, they may be compared to only one other group of humans on the planet: babies.”
― Stanley Bing, Board Room Babies

“It is believed that Revson is the author of the oft-quoted statement, uttered during one long working weekend to his subordinates, “If you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother to come in on Sunday.”
― Stanley Bing, Board Room Babies

“Throughout our time here on earth, we all have a choice. To do things the mediocre way . . . or Machiavelli’s way.”
― Stanley Bing, What Would Machiavelli Do?: The Ends Justify the Meanness

“While in their conference room perusing some papers, he came upon a middle manager who was being yelled at by a senior vice president of finance. The poor man’s shoulders were bent with anguish, his eyes were red and runny with sadness and humiliation, his hands shook, and he could scarcely raise his voice to defend himself.”
― Stanley Bing, Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up

“The executives that ran Lehman Bros. into the ground several years ago had a macho culture that abhorred personal time. One executive was pressured to go to the office while his wife was actually delivering a baby.[18] Whether such assiduity resulted in a better work product has now been pretty definitively ascertained.”
― Stanley Bing, Board Room Babies

“When lightning is obviously about to strike a certain tree, one must consider sitting under another.”
― Stanley Bing, Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up

“The real Machiavellian, like the infant, believes there is nothing bigger or more important than him or herself. To succeed, you will need to achieve that view, to return to the liberating egocentrism of the selfish, amoral child who wants what he wants and permits nothing to get in its way.”
― Stanley Bing, What Would Machiavelli Do?: The Ends Justify the Meanness

“The worst things are done not by people who believe they are doing wrong, but by those who are convinced that they walk with the hand of God on one shoulder.”
― Stanley Bing, Sun Tzu Was a Sissy: Conquer Your Enemies, Promote Your Friends, and Wage the Real Art of War

“WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. The Three Slogans of the Party George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four”
― Stanley Bing, Sun Tzu Was a Sissy: Conquer Your Enemies, Promote Your Friends, and Wage the Real Art of War

“Bill Clinton has perhaps been the most amazing practitioner of truth management in public life. He’s had to be. Beset by enemies willing to use any tool to do him in, he let the truth out like a fly fisherman plays out a line, delicately, artfully, with infinite finesse, never emitting more truth than necessary, struggling mightily to tell us what he could without admitting defeat.”
― Stanley Bing, What Would Machiavelli Do?: The Ends Justify the Meanness