Frederick W. Taylor

“It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured.”

“We can see and feel the waste of material things. Awkward, inefficient, or ill-directed movements of men, however, leave nothing visible or tangible behind them.”

“In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first.”

“The principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee.”

“The best management is a true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, and principles, as a foundation.”

“What the workmen want from their employers beyond anything else is high wages, and what employers want from their workmen most of all is a low labor cost of manufacture.”

“The art of management has been defined, 'as knowing exactly what you want men to do, and then seeing that they do it in the best and cheapest way'.”

“The search for better, for more competent men, from the bottom to the top of the ranks, is the search for the quickest and surest method of attaining the maximum prosperity.”

“Under scientific management the initiative of the workmen is obtained with absolute uniformity and to a greater extent than is possible under the old system.”

“There is no question that the tendency of the average man is to take it easy.”

“The first-class man is the one who can do the work of a first-class man.”

“Each man must be taught that in the long run the interests of the workmen and the interests of the employers are mutual.”

“All of our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.”

“No system of management, however good, should be applied in a wooden, stiff, and unreasoning manner.”