Eric Ries Quotes

I want to be judged on my own merits.

In the managerial organization, the top people sit in judgment; in the innovative organization it is their job to encourage ideas, no matter how unripe or crude.

People do a better job if they respect the leader of the company. I learned that on my mission - the value of people and how to truly appreciate them.

Your culture will only ever be as healthy as the senior leader wants it to be.

I think most Americans don't agree with the idea that the best qualified person should not get the job.

I think the chair's job is to be fair and I think the job of all of the vice chairs is to make sure that happens. And we have really robust conversations about what balance is, and it's not easy.

I hire people who can do their jobs and who will advise me of things they don't agree with. The worst thing you can do is get in a room with 14 people who say, "OK!" Then you really are making decisions about engineering and finance and other areas.

I ask the clergy why don't I see myself represented in leadership? And I'm told, and this happens quite a bit, "We don't think about race when we hire. We just hire the best person for the job."

Trust is the glue that holds an org together & the lubricant that moves it forward.

We don't have ways of resolving the arguments in idea meritocratic way.

In order to get past disagreements, you just can't have one person with power decide. In other words, so just because I'm a boss, it would be terrible if I then said, "Okay, we're gonna go do this." That's why, after that thoughtful disagreement, there has to be a process of an idea meritocracy. That means okay, now you have to vote, not that the decision resides with power. And then you vote and move beyond it.

Companies don't have ideas; only people do. And what motivates people are the bonds and loyalty and trust they develop between each other. What matters is the mortar, not just the bricks.

All America loses when any person is denied or forced out of a job because of sexual orientation. Being gay, the last time I thought about it, seemed to have nothing to do with the ability to read a balance book, fix a broken bone, or change a spark plug.

You don't want to do what your parents want you to do. You got your own things. And the whole idea of getting a job because of who your father is - that didn't isn't right.

A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.

I will say this: basically there in [MacGyver] was an idea and it was executed with a bunch of different things in mind, and that's where I will stop talking, because if I were to continue it might sound like I would be slagging off all of these people that I worked closely with, who did such a great and amazing job in their own right.

I'd rather work with someone who's good at their job but doesn't like me, than someone who likes me but is a ninny.

Schools have never been about getting access to information. That's the job of libraries. Schools and universities have nobler missions as gentle gatekeepers. Their role is to control ideas on the loose and to present the best and noblest ideas to the young.

Early on, I knew I had ideas, but I wasn't sure when it was appropriate to bring them to the table and I was so intimidated by these titans that I was working for.

As far as ideas about book design: I have plenty. But I also try and let people do their jobs.

Good ideas will always get funded, so that's not going to be a problem. But you will see that it will be harder and harder for bad ideas to get funded.

The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureat.

American literature has been, and is, singularly deficient in established critics who have anything like a rational conception of their jobs. The majority, initiate in a few of the patent rituals of Aristotle and Quintilian, don the forbidding robes of high priests to Sweetness and Light, and go about their business much as if the idea were to keep all they know to themselves.

One of the things I learned, the easiest of lessons, was that the better you do your job, often going against conventional mores, the less popular you are likely to be.