More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
It became a Carnegie technique to stockpile cash and expand in bad economic times—the opposite of what most businesses do.
Not only hadn’t Carnegie cosigned but he gave them a righteous lecture about financial responsibility for daring to think he would even contemplate something so foolish.
he astounded them by quoting precisely the costs and revenues of each company present (by becoming a small stockholder, he had obtained their corporate reports).
“The committee at once got off its high horse, stopped snickering at me and met my demands.”
“Cut costs, scoop the market, and run the mills full.”
“Watch your costs, and the profits will take care of themselves,” he said. He knew that “a penny a ton gain in efficiency could translate to millions of dollars.”
But Carnegie was hardly cheap. He spent enormous amounts of money for even the smallest technological edge without a second thought.
Carnegie never forgot that modern factories had killed his father with their more efficient steam looms. With the largest and most modern factory in America, he planned to be the one making a killing.
It was readily apparent to Carnegie that the money generated by faster production more than paid for new equipment.
He was a human engine pushing an accelerating pace of innovation, driving large groups of men, often mercilessly, toward levels of productivity never imagined.
hypomanic impatience can be an asset.
In him Carnegie found a kindred spirit—a fellow impatient man.
“I can’t afford to pay them any other way.”
Machines and systems that could increase efficiency were worth their weight in gold, but people who could design, run, and improve such systems were worth their weight in platinum.
Paying high wages to the best of his employee...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“Any ambitious young man had universal opportunity just sitting there waiting to be taken. No barriers.
A trial, Carnegie believed, was the best any man could hope for. “That’s all we get ourselves. If he can win the race he is our racehorse; if not he goes to the cart.”
A society in which the best man could win would itself win in the competition between nations
Hypomanic entrepreneurs can run through people quickly. Using them up, driving them away, or turning against them are all common patterns among hypomanic leaders.
“I am as certain of it as I can be certain of anything.”
“he who dies rich dies disgraced.”
“How should Andrew Carnegie spend his money?” It received 45,000 suggestions, the most common of which was “Give it to me.”
Carnegie had a vision that was so ambitious and lofty it made everything he had accomplished in industry pale by comparison.
Carnegie felt he owed his development as a human being in large part to books.
“rapidity, energy, and confident enthusiasm,”
Carnegie argued that the lure of freedom was not just drawing a large quantity of immigrants. It was selectively attracting Europe’s highest-quality men and women.
“When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs another man, that is more than self-government, that is despotism.”
“Every thing can always be done faster” was Ford’s mantra. Day after day, he paced the factory floor shouting, “No, no! Not fast enough!,” stopping at every workstation, brainstorming aloud
His impatience was the secret to his success.
“What is right cannot fail,”
“Four or five hours a night was all he could stand before the motor inside him made him jump up and start moving again”
“You can’t keep a good idea down,”
“To heck with one-ball golf.”
“My unchanging policy will be great star, great director, great play, great cast. You are authorized to get these without stint or limit. Spare nothing, neither expense, time nor effort. Simply send me the bill and I will O.K.”
Budd’s mother believed that Mayer was genuinely a little crazy:
their speed, humor, brashness and glamour.”
it was his habit to refuse to join the school teams—despite a natural athletic tendency—and to organize rival teams within the school, with no rules for training, for the purpose of challenging and defeating the school team.
David may have been going mad, but he was a mad genius.
“A genius,” said Smith, “is someone who knows a good idea when he hears one.”
What psychiatrists call “impulsivity,” entrepreneurs call “seizing the moment.” Venter has made some of his best, and some of his worst, decisions at this hurried pace.
There were two reasons why those grants were rejected,” said one of his assistants. “First, we were way ahead of everybody else, and nobody realized it. And second, Craig was an asshole and everybody realized it.”31 Venter went full speed ahead without any NIH funds,
Ironically, after Venter had successfully sequenced the Haemophilus influenzae genome using the shotgun technique, he received a letter from the NIH appeals committee upholding the denial of his grant application on the grounds that “the experiment wasn’t feasible.”
They called Venter to ask if he wanted to head the project. Venter said they were “crazy,” and then said yes.
Venter thinks charismatic leadership might be in his blood. “When I look at my genetic past, my father’s parents were Mormons, not just Mormons but the strongest evangelical leaders. They were very fervent.” If he had been less educated, he said, he might have put his energies into religion. “In Germany they wanted to know if I was going to start a religion around what I had accomplished. I thought they were kidding, but they were deadly serious.” His longtime personal assistant, Heather Kowalski, told me, “I’ve always thought that it would be easy for Craig to start a cult.”
“Craig has radiant energy. He comes into a room, and it seems like the room has been empty until he got there. He’s very uplifting to be
“when everything is falling apart is sometimes when I have my greatest clarity. In Vietnam, I ran an ER. When everyone else was panicking, I functioned extremely well.”
“Working with Craig is like being on a high-speed treadmill. He sets completely unrealistic deadlines, announces them to the press, and forces us to scurry like hell. Not everyone can take the pressure.”
“Really smart, extraordinary people can work far beyond the level they are used to working at,”
“Craig likes to do high dives into empty pools. He tries to time it so the water is there by the time he hits bottom.”
Venter has called himself “a super enzyme” because “I catalyze things.”
