Grace Hopper Quotes

I had several different bosses during the early years of 'Dilbert.' They were all pretty sure I was mocking someone else.

Politics exist in the boardroom, as well.

You can always spot the employee playing golf with his boss. He's the fellow who makes a hole in one and says, "oops!"

The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven't made up their minds.

I won't be making any friends in the corporate suites.

I had been plunged into a different world. I found myself spending half my time answering weird questions on book tours in the Midwest. People would stand up and explain to me the situation in their office and ask me whether they should resign or not.

Office life is very, very strange. It's like no other way of living. You have an intimacy with people who you work with in the office, yet if you meet them on the streets, you both look the other way because you're embarrassed.

So, what genetic disposition do you need to be a CFO? Essentially, you need to be miserable, you need to be the sort of person who takes drinks away from people at the end of a party.

If I weren't fighting, I'd be in the business world.

I've enjoyed my time at every club I have worked at, I've been lucky, but I won't jump in and finish up working with a chairman I didn't like very much.

I understand that bureaucracy, hierarchy and managing politics is not easy.

I don't like to power trip, but when you're a boss you have to fight for certain things.

At the end of the day, when you are in the front office, your tenure is dictated by the people surrounding you.

A few people have privately voiced fears that on coming back to office I shall go after them. These fears are groundless. There will be no paying off old scores. The past is prologue.

As things now stand, the office is a slightly meaner battleground than the home. Male bosses seem to dominate their women underlings as they would never dominate their wives.

If you make believe that ten guys in pin-striped suits are back in a kindergarten class playing with building blocks, you'll get a rough picture of what life in a corporation is like.

A boss who interrupts an employee a lot is called an extrovert, whereas an employee who interrupts a boss too often is called an ex-employee.

Some of my unhappiest moments have been in organizations. Somehow it seems to be quite respectable to do things in organizations that you would never do in private life. I have had people insult me to my face in front of colleagues. I have had my feelings rammed down my throat on the pretext that it would do me good. I have been required to do things which I didn't agree with because the organization wished it... In my worst moments I have thought organizations were places designed to be run by sadists and staffed by masochists.

Nine to Five is actually one of my favorite movies. I watched it a thousand times when I was a child, literally a thousand times.

Never underrate the boss! The boss may look illiterate. He may look stupid. But there is no risk at all in overrating a boss. If you underrate him he will bitterly resent it or impute to you the deficiency in brains and knowledge you imputed to him.

Ideas really do matter. But in any organization a good idea will only go so far unless its proponents are willing to fight the political games to get the idea adopted.

I think women are really vicious in the work place, they're really jealous, really competitive. Women are emotional, they cry in toilets. The sisterhood only extends as far as the kitchen door. Men talk in logic and rational terms, they don't squark and make a noise.

There is no retracing our steps.

I always believe your instinct is the most correct instinct.

I have a car. I have a steady job. I have a business, and I have to make serious decisions.