Mary Parker Follett Quotes - Page 2

I do not think that we have psychological and ethical and economic problems. We have human problems, with psychological, ethical and economical aspects, and as many others as you like.

Idealism and realism meet in the actual.

the point of educating instead of blaming seems to me very important. For nothing stultifies one more than being blamed. Moreover, if the question is, who is to blame?, perhaps each will want to place the blame on someone else, or on the other hand, someone may try to shield his fellow-worker. In either case the attempt is to hide the error and if this is done the error cannot be corrected.

We have thought of peace as passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences ... From War to Peace is not from the strenuous to the easy existence; it is from the futile to the effective, from the stagnant to the active, from the destructive to the creative way of life ... The world will be regenerated by the people who rise above these passive ways and heroically seek, by whatever hardship, by whatever toil, the methods by which people can agree.

Experience may be hard but we claim its gifts because they are real, even though our feet bleed on its stones.

And the most successful leader of all is one who sees another picture not yet actualized. He sees the things which belong in his present picture but which are not yet there.

The best leader does not ask people to serve him, but the common end. The best leader has not followers, but men and women working with him.

Most people are not for or against anything; the first object of getting people together is to make them respond somehow, to overcome inertia.

Democracy is not brute numbers; it is a genuine union of true individuals...the essence of democracy is creating. The technique of democracy is group organization.

The leader is one who can organize the experience of the group ... and thus get the full power of the group. The leader makes the team. This is pre-eminently the leadership quality - the ability to organize all the forces there are in an enterprise and make them serve a common purpose.

Fear of difference is fear of life itself.

Imitation is for shirkers, like-minded-ness for the comfort lovers, unifying for the creators.

One of the greatest values of controversy is its revealing nature. The real issues at stake come into the open and have the possibility of being reconciled.

The unifying of opposites is the eternal process.

It is not opposition but indifference which separates men.

if you wish to train yourself for higher executive positions, the first thing for you to decide is what you are training for. Ability to dominate or manipulate others? That ought to be easy enough, since most of the magazines advertise sure ways of developing something they call 'personality.' But I am convinced that the first essential of business success is the capacity for organized thinking.

The divorce of our so-called spiritual life from our daily activities is a fatal dualism.

We are not wholly patriotic when we are working with all our heart for America merely; we are truly patriotic only when we are working also that America may take her place worthily and helpfully in the world of nations . . . Interdependence is the keynote of the relations of nations as it is the keynote of the relations of individuals within nations.

Responsiblity is the great developer of men.

Leader and followers are both following the invisible leader-the common purpose.

In the small group then is where we shall find the inner meaning of democracy, its very heart and core.

There is no such thing as vicarious experience.

Democracy is self-creating coherence.

we should think not only of what the leader does to the group, but also of what the group does to the leader.

I am convinced that any feeling of exaltation because we have people under us should be conquered, for I am sure that if we enjoy being over people, there will be something in our manner which will make them dislike being under us.