Ross Perot Quotes
120 Ross Perot Quotes
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We had an abundance of leaders so that, as the company grew, we could make it grow successfully. That was the secret for our company’s success.
Ross Perot
I’m a switchboard operator! … I’m very fortunate to have access to the people who can make a difference – just one step in a long process.
Ross Perot
I’m not interested in raising statues as much as I’m interested in honoring heroes.
Ross Perot
[On special military attire] The worst thing you can do is have the canteen on the statue in the wrong place!
Ross Perot
I return to three basic themes: a strong moral/ethical base, strong family units, and the finest public schools. Get those three things right, and we would fix many of the problems in our country.
Ross Perot
Scouting played a huge part in my life, and I loved it.
Ross Perot
[On the US having to borrow money from other countries] We have to go around the world with a tambourine and a tin cup.
Ross Perot
We've got to nuke the GM system.
Ross Perot
When you get down to the guys who actually have their hands on things, they know what to do.
Ross Perot
I come from an environment where, if you see a snake, you kill it. At GM, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is go hire a consultant on snakes. Then you get a committee on snakes, and then you discuss it for a couple of years. The most likely course of action is -- nothing. You figure, the snake hasn't bitten anybody yet, so you just let him crawl around on the factory floor. We need to build an environment where the first guy who sees the snake kills it.
Ross Perot
At Electronic Data Systems employees were trained from the day they joined the company to spend all day serving the customer, getting results, being the best in the world -- not being good bureaucrats.
Ross Perot
At GM the stress is not on getting results -- on winning -- but on bureaucracy, on conforming to the GM system. You get to the top of General Motors not by doing something, but by not making a mistake.
Ross Perot
One day I made a speech to some senior executives. I said, ''Okay, guys, I'm going to give you the whole code on what's wrong. You don't like your customers. You don't like your dealers. You don't like the people who make your cars. You don't like your stockholders. And, to a large extent, you don't like one another. ''For this company to win, we're going to have to love our customers.
Ross Perot
The guys on the factory floor are the salt of the earth -- not mad-dog, rabid, burn-the-plant-down radicals.
Ross Perot
Sniping at one another -- the financial guys vs. the car guys -- is terribly destructive.
Ross Perot
I answered every customer complaint about a General Motors car the whole time I was on the GM board. This created great trauma inside GM because there was a department that did that. I tried that department, and all they did was send out form letters.
Ross Perot
When you step on the accelerator, a Cadillac needs to move. Your trunk needs to be big enough to put a thermos jug in. You don't need oil puddles under any car -- and you damn sure don't need them under a Cadillac.
Ross Perot
One old guy stood up and said, ''Ross, I've been a Cadillac dealer for 35 years, and this is the first time anybody has ever given us an opportunity to tell them what is wrong.'' I said, ‘'What about the surveys?'' He said, ''There are no surveys.''
Ross Perot
Two top managers, who were already rich before the GM merger, refused to accept any shares because they wanted them to go to the younger people who didn't have any. The General Motors guys went crazy. They said, ''It must be nice to be so rich that you thumb your nose at several million dollars' worth of stock.'' I said, ''No, you're missing the point. It goes to the troops. That's what leadership is.'' By contrast, the General Motors guys closed the plants, said no profit sharing, and the next day gave themselves a $1 million bonus.
Ross Perot
Symbolism is important. I took the position that anybody who needed a chauffeur to drive him to work was probably too old to be on the payroll, and that anybody in a car company ought to be driving his own car because you didn't get much of a feel in the back seat.
Ross Perot
You should walk around the 25th floor of the General Motors Building in New York. An entire teak forest must have been decimated for that floor -- and this is something they use one afternoon a month.
Ross Perot
I told General Motors very openly that the only reason I was selling my company to them is that I couldn't think of anything more interesting to do with my life than to work night and day to help revitalize one of the world's great corporations and help it achieve its full potential.
Ross Perot
There is no accountability in the public school system – except for coaches. You know what happens to a losing coach. You fire him. A losing teacher can go on losing for 30 years and then go to glory.
Ross Perot
We shouldn’t appeal to the differences between us… We should love one another.
Ross Perot
Divided teams lose, united teams win…
Ross Perot
Cheaper energy benefits millions of people; expensive energy benefits a few.
Ross Perot
[On America in 1988] We’re at the bottom of the industrialized world in education.
Ross Perot
Seventy-five percent of high school seniors don’t know who Whitman or Thoreau is. Twenty-five percent of college seniors in Texas can’t name the country on Texas’ southern border. That’s scary.
Ross Perot
[On America in 1988] We’re the largest debtor nation in the history of mankind. Yet everybody’s out there taking a pledge on no new taxes.
Ross Perot
When things are good, people get soft. When things are bad, people get serious.
Ross Perot
From the first day I had money, I’ve been trying to solve problems liberals just wring their hands about.
Ross Perot
It will be like turning a bunch of bulldogs loose on a bunch of poodles.
Ross Perot
I want people who are smart, tough, self-reliant, have a history of success since childhood, a history of being the best at what they’ve done, people who love to win. And if you run out of people who love to win, look for people who hate to lose.
Ross Perot
What is an EDSer? An EDSer is a person that goes anywhere, anytime, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to make sure that EDS is the finest computer company in the world and that nobody beats us in the competition.
Ross Perot
How long will it take, and how much will it cost?
Ross Perot
[In 1988] Our system of government is not working. We can’t even come up with a budget. We certainly don’t have the most able people in our society running for president. We are getting people who will endure anything because of their power drive.
Ross Perot
Our pioneers tamed the wilderness. Everybody said you couldn’t build a transcontinental railroad, but we built it. Everybody said you couldn’t build the Panama Canal… but we built it. America will stop being great when its people stop being good.
Ross Perot
[On being asked to run for President] Jeez, I’ve never run for dogcatcher.
Ross Perot
Revitalizing General Motors was like teaching an elephant to tap dance. You find the sensitive spot and start poking.
Ross Perot
That’s what I am. An irritant around here, I stir things up.
Ross Perot
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