Herbert Newton Casson Quotes

"Safety first" has been the motto of the human race for half a million years; but it has never been the motto of leaders. A leader must face danger. He must take the risk and the blame, and the brunt of the storm.

As yet the efficiency of selling goods has not been worked out. Most salesmen believe it cannot be done. They claim that there are too many variables in the problem. Perhaps there are, but nobody knows until the experiment has been thoroughly tried. In every case the victories of Efficiency have been won in spite of the most stubborn opposition from the men who were being helped. And one fact is sure - that the first Advertisers and Sales Managers who try out Efficiency and succeed will find themselves in a gold mine. They will have found a better way to enter a market that handles, in an average year, thirty thousand million dollars worth of goods.

If money is all that a man makes, then he will be poor — poor in happiness, poor in all that makes life worth living.

There is more power in the open hand than in the clenched fist.

No American can afford to treat salesmanship as a small matter. Why? Because the United States had a salesmanship basis - because only thirteen States were gained by war and all the others were gained by purchase and bargaining.

Herbert Casson was a highly prolific writer on management, with a career as a management guru spanning some four decades. A skilled writer who was also a successful entrepreneur, he used his own experiences and acute observations of the world around him to develop a philosophy of management based on the concept of ‘efficiency’. He published more than seventy books, which by the time of his death had sold more than half a million copies around the world. Something of a maverick, he was never really accepted by the business academic community in either Britain or America. His books were popular and populist, highly entertaining and full of penetrating insight.

According to Taylor, the principles of Efficiency are:

It is not size that counts in business. Some companies with $500,000 capital net more profits than other companies with $5 million. Size is a handicap unless efficiency goes with it.

The average man takes life as a trouble. He is in a chronic state of irritation at the whole performance. He does not learn to differentiate between troubles and difficulties, usually, until some real trouble bowls him over. He fusses about pin-pricks until a mule kicks him. Then he learns the difference.

The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves.

In handling men, there are three feelings that a man must not possess - fear, dislike and contempt. If he is afraid of men he cannot handle them. Neither can he influence them in his favor if he dislikes or scorns them. He must neither cringe nor sneer. He must have both self-respect and respect for others.

There is no fate that plans men's lives. Whatever comes to us, good or bad, is usually the result of our own action or lack of action.

What has worked so well in the acquisition of knowledge and in the production of commodities may work just as well in the distribution of those commodities.

Goodness is always an asset. A man who is straight, friendly and useful may never be famous, but he is respected and liked by all who know him. He has laid a sound foundation for success and he will have a worthwhile life.

Steel can be tempered and hardened, and so can men. In this world of struggle, which was not designed for softies, a man must be harder than what hits him. Yes, he must be diamond-hard. Then he'll not be "fed up" with his little personal troubles.