Top 84 J Watson Sayings
#1. (Thomas J. Watson Sr. of IBM followed the same rule: "I'm no genius," he said. "I'm smart in spots - but I stay around those spots.")
Warren Buffett
#2. If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.
Thomas J. Watson Jr.
#4. All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.
Thomas J. Watson
#5. But, I realized, these truths are all I have. They are my past. They are what makes me human. Without them, I am nothing. Nothing but an animal. I
S.J. Watson
#6. I could think of nothing, nothing to say, nothing to feel. My mind was empty.
S.J. Watson
#7. I want him to be happy. And I want you to be happy, too. Even if you can only find that happiness without me.
S.J. Watson
#8. If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.
Thomas J. Watson
#9. It's not life, it's just an existence, jumping from one moment to the next with no idea of the past, and no plan for the future.
S.J. Watson
#10. There is so much,I thought,just under the surface. So many memories, darting like silvery minnows in a shallow stream.
S.J. Watson
#11. Pain, or pleasure. I could not tell where one ended and the other began.
S.J. Watson
#12. Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.
Thomas J. Watson
#14. Why did he feel that wanting to make sense of my fractured life meant that I wanted to change it in some way?
S.J. Watson
#15. Work. Write. Read. Keep putting words on the page, because that's the only way you'll get better.
S.J. Watson
#16. He forgave you though,' said Claire. 'He never held it against you, ever. All he cared about was that you lived, and that you got better. He would have given everything for that. Everything. Nothing else mattered.
S.J. Watson
#17. Do you trust me?
The question is usually asked before an admission that such trust is misplaced.
S.J. Watson
#18. To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.
Thomas J. Watson
#19. 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?
Thomas J. Watson
#20. I looked over at him, running in the distance. Another faulty, fucked-up brain in a healthy body.
S.J. Watson
#21. Don't make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.
Thomas J. Watson
#22. Charles Wesley's hymns are forceful because they contain so many words which are physical: for him the life of a Christian was to be experienced in the body as well as in the soul.
J.R. Watson
#23. There are memories I am better off without. Things better lost forever.
S.J. Watson
#24. Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all ... good design must primarily serve people.
Thomas J. Watson
#25. How will I feel when I look in a mirror and see the reflection of my grandmother?
S.J. Watson
#26. I asked for this, I thought, at the same time as I never asked for this. Is it possible to both
want and not want something at the same time?
S.J. Watson
#27. She looks so young, so hungry, her eyes full of possibility, of what is in store for her.
S.J. Watson
#28. What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?
S.J. Watson
#29. He put his hand on mine. I fell into him, knowing what he would do, what he must do, and he did. He opened his arms and held me, and I let him embrace me. "It's okay," he said. "It's okay.
S.J. Watson
#30. I am floating, I thought, completely without anchor, at the mercy of the wind.
S.J. Watson
#32. When asked how to achieve success more rapidly, came the quick reply, 'Double your failure rate'.
Thomas J. Watson
#33. There were never going to be any happy endings for me. I know that now. But that is all right.
S.J. Watson
#35. I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd fought for you. I was weak and stupid.
S.J. Watson
#36. And then, when there is nothing else between us but love, we can begin to find a way to truly be together.
S.J. Watson
#37. With him everything is a test, affection is measured, that given weighed against that which has been received, and the balance, more often than not, disappointing him.
S.J. Watson
#38. We sat opposite each other across a table that swam with spilled coffee, warming our hands on our drinks.
S.J. Watson
#39. Whatever enjoyment I might have had at the time would disappear overnight like snow melting on a warm roof.
S.J. Watson
#40. The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas and enthusiasm.
Thomas J. Watson
#41. It's so difficult, isn't it? To see what's going on when you're in the absolute middle of something? It's only with hindsight we can see things for what they are.
S.J. Watson
#43. Loyalty saves the wear and tear of making daily decisions as to what is best to do.
Thomas J. Watson
#44. I will never abandon you. I love you too much.
S.J. Watson
#46. these truths are all I have. They are my past. They are what makes me human. Without them, I am nothing. Nothing but an animal.
S.J. Watson
#47. 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.
Thomas J. Watson
#48. I am sliding, down,down. Toward blackness, I must not sleep. I must not sleep.I.Must.Not.Sleep.
S.J. Watson
#49. Soon I will sleep, and my brain will begin to delete everything. Tomorrow I will go through it all again.
S.J. Watson
#50. We both pretended to attach no significance to what had happened, and so revealed just how much significance there was.
S.J. Watson
#51. Two wrongs don't make anything right, but maybe they make things more equal.
S.J. Watson
#52. The little things. Perhaps it is these trivialities I have been writing down in my book, these small hooks on which my whole life is hung.
S.J. Watson
#53. I have no choice but to face whatever my reality has become.
S.J. Watson
#54. 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.
Thomas J. Watson
#55. Instead, thoughts race, as if, in a mind devoid of memory, each idea has too much space to grow and move, to collide with others in a shower of sparks before spinning off into its own distance. I
S.J. Watson
#56. This is dying everyday. Over and over.
S.J. Watson
#57. Since we built such sophisticated business machines, people tended to think of IBM as a model of order and logic - a totally streamlined organization in which we developed plans rationally and carried them out with utter precision. I never thought for a minute that was really the case.
Thomas J. Watson
#58. I wonder what I would find if I could go back and decipher the layers, if it were possible to delve into my past that way, but realize that, even if it were possible, it would be futile.
S.J. Watson
#60. 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.
Thomas J. Watson
#61. It's perfectly possible to hold two opposing points of view in the mind at once, oscillating between them.
S.J. Watson
#62. Chrissy," she said. Her voice was quiet, measured. I thought I detected something in it, some new emotion. Fear. "Describe Ben to me.
S.J. Watson
#63. 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.
Thomas J. Watson
#64. Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.
Thomas J. Watson
#65. She said that you and Ben were separated. Ben left you. A year or so after you moved to Waring House." "Separated?" I said. It felt as if the room was receding, becoming vanishingly small. Disappearing.
S.J. Watson
#66. We are in a restaurant, smilling, leaning in over a half-eaten meal, our faces flushed with love and thr bite of the sun.
S.J. Watson
#67. I could see it all. The hand on the shoulder, then the hug. The mouths that find each other through the tears, the moment when guilt and the certainty that things must go no further gives way to lust and the certainty that they cannot stop.
S.J. Watson
#68. I guess sometimes it's not so much about how long you've known someone, but about what you've been through together.
S.J. Watson
#69. His grief is not new. It has had the time to bed down within him, to become part of his foundations, rather than something that rocks them.
S.J. Watson
#70. Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.
Thomas J. Watson Jr.
#71. 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.
Thomas J. Watson
#72. Thoughts race, as if, in a mind devoid of memory, each idea has too much space to grow and move, to collide with others in a shower of sparks before spinning off into its own distance.
S.J. Watson
#73. I am frightened to discover my past. What I have achieved, and what I have not.
S.J. Watson
#74. I saw his eyes go up and he looked past me, toward the door, as if he were watching it, waiting. But there was no one there, it did not open, no one left or came in. I wondered if he was actually dreaming of escape.
S.J. Watson
#75. The hands on the shoulder, then the hug.The mouths that find each other through the tears.
S.J. Watson
#76. We're wearing masks, all of us, all of the time. We're presenting a face, a version of ourselves, to the world, to each other. We show a different face depending on who we're with and what they expect of us. Even when we're alone it's just another mask, the version of ourselves we'd prefer to be.
S.J. Watson
#77. 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.
Thomas J. Watson
#78. I want to sleep. To find a safe place somewhere, and close my eyes, and rest, like an animal.
That is what I am. An animal. Living from moment to moment, day to day, trying to make sense of the world in which I find myself.
S.J. Watson
#79. Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops.
Thomas J. Watson
#80. Is it possible to both want and not want something at the same time? For desire to ride with fear?
S.J. Watson
#81. Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.
Thomas J. Watson Jr.
#82. I think of my sponsor. Rachel. "Addiction is a patient disease," she said to me once. "It'll wait for your whole life, if it has to. Never forget that.
S.J. Watson
#83. I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless. I didn't feel ashamed.
S.J. Watson
#84. I couldn't imagine how i would get from here to there. i couldn't imagine living through a whole string of identical days.
S.J. Watson
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