Max de Pree Quotes
From a leader's perspective, the most serious betrayal has to do with thwarting human potential, with quenching the spirit, with failing to deal equitably with each other as human beings.
De Pree, Max. Leadership Jazz. Currency Doubleday, 1992, p. 142.
Each of the original American colonies was established with a different charter and had different structures. Pennsylvania was unlike the other colonies not chartered to a company or some other structure but was given completely to William Penn as his personal property. So there was never a Royal Governor appointed by the King or a Company for Pennsylvania. Technically Penn was the "True and Absolute Proprietor" where all of Pennsylvania was treated the same as a person's personal estate in England. William Penn was a very tolerant Quaker with strong democratic, and egalitarian beliefs. He established his estate with a legislature that had the power of taxation and the making of civil laws, defense and development. He was one of the great figures in the history of America. Philadelphia was the largest city in the colonies and the center of American science and culture. However, Penn's son, Thomas Penn was everything his father despised. He was aristocratic, arrogant, power seeking, vain and greedy. However, he had inherited Pennsylvania and was the proprietor. He saw the Pennsylvania Legislature and Franklin, one of its leaders, as the people who were running his private property. So Thomas Penn at this meeting took the legal position that his father did not have the authority to establish a legislature that had power; it could only advise the proprietor. See {583431} for Thomas Penn's statement that produced this reply.
President Johnson was trying to organize peace talks in Paris. Nixon didn’t want a public announcement to occur before election day when he was running against Hubert Humphrey. Knowing the South Vietnamese President was reluctant to go to Paris but was under pressure from America to do so, he sent a message through Chennault that he should not accept and “hang on” as Nixon would shortly win. The South Vietnam president refused to go to Paris, Nixon won the election, and then had to cope with the continuation of the war that might well have ended before he took office. Nixon believed that he could get Russia and China to pressure Ho Chi Min to make peace. Nixon's private overtures to the South Vietnam president, violated the Logan Act which prohiited private citizens negoatioating with foreign governments. President Johnson was aware of Nixon's commission of this felony want wanted to prosecute him, but the evicence had been obtained from secret intelligene agency bugging and wiretapping both the South Vietnam Embassay in Wishington and the Presidential Palace in Vietnam the public knowledge of which would have caused a scandal. Instead, he called Nixon and warned him to stop, but the damage had already been done, and the South Vitenamese government would not go to Pariis where they would have to agree to a coalition government with the Communists. THey waited for Nixon to deliver a peace treaty which would leave them in charge of South Vietnam. In the final analysis, the South Vietnamese ended up with nothing and no participation in anything when the U. S. Withdrew and the Communists took over.
Legendary pro football coach Vince Lombardi was a strict disciplinarian.
Max De Pree was an American businessman and writer. A son of D. J. De Pree, founder of Herman Miller office furniture company, he and his brother Hugh De Pree assumed leadership of the company in the early 1960s, Hugh becoming CEO and president in 1962. Max succeeded his brother Hugh as CEO in 1980 and served in that capacity to 1987, and he was a member of the company's Board of Directors until 1995. His book Leadership is an Art has sold more than 800,000 copies. In 1992, De Pree was inducted into Junior Achievement's U.S. Business Hall of Fame. He was involved with the Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary (established in 1996 as the De Pree Center) since its establishment. He died at his home in Holland, Michigan in 2017.
