Executive Compensation Quotes

Even the highest compensation is a tiny fraction of the value created by many business and technical innovations. The problem with executive compensation in the United States is not with this idea. The problem is that in many cases the high compensation levels persist even when innovations do not occur and reactions to the innovations of others are slow. ~ William W. Lewis

For example: (1) As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated. ~ Warren Buffett

Executive compensation dipped during the financial crisis, but it has risen briskly since, and is now higher than it's ever been. ~ Anonymous

We have new rules that give shareholders the ability to vote on executive compensation. We have new rules for asset-backed securities. We have new rules around credit rating agencies. ~ Mary Schapiro

Those involved in mental as opposed to physical effort or who carry the responsibilities of management are presumed to require a higher payment for their submission to the purposes of organization than those who render only physical or manual service, however adept or talented that may be.

This is because there is profound difference in the nature and extent of the submission that is made. The person on the shop floor or its equivalent gives more or less diligent and deft physical effort for a specified number of hours a day. Beyond that nothing in principle--not thought, certainly not conformity of speech or behavior--is expected. Of the high corporate executive a more complete submission to the purposes of the organization is usually required. He (or she) must speak and also think well of the aims of the enterprise; he may never in public and not wisely in private raise doubt as to the depth and sincerity of his own commitment. Many factors determine his large, often very large, compensation, including the need to pay for the years of preparation, for the considerable intelligence that is requires, for the responsibility that is carried, and for the alleged risks of high position. As a practical matter, his rate of pay is also influenced by the significant and highly convenient role the executive plays in establishing it; much that accrues to the senior corporate executive is in response to his own inspired generosity. But there is also payment for the comprehens ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

If I get a note on my script or my films, what I say to a studio executive is that, 'You know, this is the film of my legacy, and I never want to be sitting in a theater looking up on the screen and seeing something that I don't believe in.' I will never do that. ~ Gina Prince-Bythewood

The movie I've seen a million times - wait, that's not possible - my favorite movie of all times is 'The Empire Strikes Back,' directed by Irvin Kershner, executive-produced by the great George Lucas and stars Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones. ~ Donald Faison

Salary is the compensation you get for mortgaging your life ~ Sunday Adelaja

Because what happens is, as the economy suffers, tax revenues go down. But unlike businesses, where at least your variable costs go down, in government your variable costs go up: unemployment insurance, workmen's compensation, health care benefits, welfare, you name it. ~ Meg Whitman

The executive branch of this government never has, nor will suffer, while I preside, any improper conduct of its officers to escape with impunity. ~ George Washington

Two Dimensions of Executive Skills: Thinking and Doing Executive skills involving thinking (cognition) Working memory Planning/prioritization Organization Time management Metacognition Executive skills involving doing (behavior) Response inhibition Emotional control Sustained attention Task initiation Goal-directed persistence Flexibility ~ Richard Guare

When we had our children, our ideas changed somewhat. Thenceforward we lived only for them; they made all our happiness and we would never have found it save in them. In fact, nothing any longer cost us anything; the world was no longer a burden to us. As for me, my children were my great compensation, so that I wished to have many in order to bring them up for Heaven. ~ Rev. Fr. Stephane-Joseph Piat

As entrepreneurs, we often get pressured into hiring an industry executive. While it's good to hire people with experience, it can also be a stumbling block because they think about the business the same way everyone else does. ~ Blake Mycoskie

In addition to the kind of critical reflection on one's previous assumptive or tacit system of values we saw Jack undertake, there must be, for Stage 4, a relocation of authority within the self. While others and their judgments will remain important to the Individuative-Reflective person, their expectations, advice and counsel will be submitted to an internal panel of experts who reserve the right to choose and who are prepared to take responsibility for their choices. I sometimes call this the emergence of the executive ego.
The two essential features of the emergence of Stage 4, then, are the critical distancing from one's previous assumptive value system and the emergence of the executive ego ...
We find that sometimes many persons complete half of this double movement, but do not complete the other. ~ James W. Fowler

A loss of sensibility follows a loss of innocence, at once a penalty and a compensation. ~ Dodie Smith

The capacities that develop in the earliest years may be harder to measure on tests of kindergarten readiness than abilities like number and letter recognition, but they are precisely the skills, closely related to executive functions, that researchers have recently determined to be so valuable in kindergarten and beyond: the ability to focus on a single activity for an extended period, the ability to understand and follow directions, the ability to cope with disappointment and frustration, the ability to interact capably with other students. ~ Paul Tough

A crucial capability of System 2 is the adoption of "task sets": it can program memory to obey an instruction that overrides habitual responses. Consider the following: Count all occurrences of the letter f in this page. This is not a task you have ever performed before and it will not come naturally to you, but your System 2 can take it on. It will be effortful to set yourself up for this exercise, and effortful to carry it out, though you will surely improve with practice. Psychologists speak of "executive control" to describe the adoption and termination of task sets, and neuroscientists have identified the main regions of the brain that serve the executive function. One of these regions is involved whenever a conflict must be resolved. Another is the prefrontal area of the brain, a region that is substantially more developed in humans than in other primates, and is involved in operations that we associate with intelligence. ~ Daniel Kahneman

It's the central executive in your brain that notices that the floor is dirty. It forms an executive attentional set for "mop the floor" and then constructs a worker attentional set for doing the actual mopping. ~ Daniel J. Levitin

The Constitution makes very clear what the obligation of the United States Senate is and what the obligation of the president of the United States is. To allow a Supreme Court position to remain vacant for well over a year cuts against what I think the intentions of the framers are and what the traditions of the Senate and the executive are. ~ Cory Booker

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Evidence of defendants' lavish lifestyles is often used to provide a motive for fraud. Jurors sometimes wonder why an executive making tens of millions of dollars would cheat to make even more. Evidence of habitual gluttony helps provide the answer. ~ Alex Berenson

I've been accused of being unambitious, but what I do takes up every minute. I'm executive producer, I'm a writer and the host. ~ Stephen Colbert

Talks on art are almost useless. The work which goes to bring progress in one's own subject is sufficient compensation for the incomprehension of imbeciles. ~ Paul Cezanne

In the rare event that the Supreme Court refuses to play along there is always a perfectly legal, extra-constitutional, quasi-legislative, quasi-executive, quasi-judicial, 'independent' regulatory commission or executive agency to kill off or override constitutional protections. ~ Ilana Mercer

The advantage of a permanent emergency for the executive is that even trivial things can routinely be accomplished by the crisis presidency. If everything is an emergency, all power is emergency power. ~ Garry Wills

Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty. ~ Immanuel Kant

It equally proves, that though individual oppression may now and then proceed from the courts of justice, the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter; I mean so long as the judiciary remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the Executive. For I agree, that "there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers." And it proves, in the last place, that as liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have every thing to fear from its union with either of the other departments ... ~ Alexander Hamilton

So I learned that even after a single day's experience of the outside world a man could easily live a hundred years in prison. He'd have laid up enough memories never to be bored. Obviously, in one way, this was a compensation. ~ Anonymous

Personally, I am far from convinced that the British system is suited to India. The parliamentary democracy we have adopted involves the British perversity of electing a legislature to form an executive: this has created a unique breed of legislator, largely unqualified to legislate, who has sought election only in order to wield (or influence) executive power. It has produced governments obliged to focus more on politics than on policy or performance. It has distorted the voting preferences of an electorate that knows which individuals it wants but not necessarily which policies. It has spawned parties that are shifting alliances of individual interests rather than the vehicles of coherent sets of ideas. It has forced governments to concentrate less on governing than on staying in office, and obliged them to cater to the lowest common denominator of their coalitions. It is time for a change. Pluralist ~ Shashi Tharoor

For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars. ~ Mary Hunter Austin

Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism. ~ Edward Gibbon

Any chief executive who hires a consultant to give them strategy should be fired. ~ Duff McDonald

With every disaster, I have come to believe for my own personal reasons, comes a compensation, a certain balancing of the accounts - not spread evenly about but clumped here and there, of benefit to very few. ~ Brian Evenson

The fact is, that with the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Jews fled Arab countries, almost all of whom left behind all their property for which compensation was never paid. ~ Meir Kahane

The moods of sadness that come over anyone who takes up art ... these dismal moods have very little compensation. ~ Edgar Degas

Little sleep, no investment portfolio, no family around, no hot water. On an evening a few days after arriving in Cange, I wondered aloud what compensation he got for these various hardships. He told me, "If you're making sacrifices, unless you're automatically following some rule, it stands to reason that you're trying to lessen some psychic discomfort. So, for example, if I took steps to be a doctor for those who don't have medical care, it could be regarded as a sacrifice, but it could also be regarded as a way to deal with ambivalence." He went on, and his voice changed a little. He didn't bristle, but his tone had an edge: "I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can't buy them. You can feel ambivalent about that, because you should feel ambivalent. Comma." This was for me one of the first of many encounters with Farmer's ~ Tracy Kidder

The primary task for the executive targeting first 100 days success is to set out the right strategic priorities and stay focused on them. ~ Niamh O'Keeffe

Leadership is not about executive position or title. It is about connection and influence. At its highest, leadership is all about adding value to the world and blessing lives through the work you do. ~ Robin Sharma

The hermit keeps a window open onto the sky, without which the world would perish from suffocation, ugliness and boredom. He is the only one, along with the poet, who still speaks the language of the beyond, who makes existence sacred, who gives life this verticality without which humanity is buffeted about beneath itself. He is a rampart against the assaults of mediocrity, nastiness, hatred that is intolerant of its opposite. He is this force, made out of weakness, that warms the atmosphere, melts the winter of the world. For men turned toward secondary things, his presence recalls the existence of the essential things: the order of the world, knowledge, the priority of salvation and the adoration of the Supreme, by imitating the sunflower whose heliotropism has much to teach us, who never turns away from the trisolar brightness. Model and prototype, the hermit represents, in a chaotic and dehumanized world, a final landmark, an ultimate axis for reference. He allows man to remain standing by recalling the Absolute; when deprived of the Totality, man becomes totalitarian by compensation. ~ Jean Biès

Philanthropic and religious bodies do not commonly make their executive officers out of saints. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

So that the executive and legislative branches of the national government depend upon, and emanate from the states. Every where the state sovereignties are represented; and the national sovereignty, as such, has no representation. ~ Joseph Story

He was standing apart from the others, a dark, brooding figure concealed in shadows.
Jacob Stone was a man who was at home in shadows.
Ever since Emily had first become aware of his existence five years ago, she had understood that he prowled the fringes of her family's world. He was part bodyguard, part troubleshooter and, to Emily's way of thinking, part enforcer for Ravenscroft International. Like the last of the lobo wolves, he was rarely seen in broad daylight, let alone in the firm's executive suites or at its glittering social functions. And the only times he had been invited into her father's private study were on those occasions when Emily had needed rescuing from her latest predicament. ~ Jayne Ann Krentz

This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. ~ Abraham Lincoln

The pimp is the executive organ of immorality. The executive organ of morality is the blackmailer. ~ Karl Kraus

To maintain the ascendancy of the Constitution over the lawmaking majority is the great and essential point on which the success of the [American] system must depend; unless that ascendancy can be preserved, the necessary consequence must be that the laws will supersede the Constitution; and, finally, the will of the Executive, by influence of its patronage, will supersede the laws ... ~ John C. Calhoun

Pilfering was common in Communist China's state-owned enterprises, as the Party secretaries were slack in guarding properties that belonged to the government and poorly paid workers felt it fair compensation for their low pay. The practice was so widespread that it was an open secret. The workers joked about it and called it "Communism," which in Chinese translation means "sharing property." Pg. 390 ~ Nien Cheng

I get the sense that many in the contemporary biblical womanhood movement feel that the tasks associated with homemaking have been so marginalized in our culture that it's up to them to restore the sacredness of keeping the home. This is a noble goal indeed, and one around which all people of faith can rally. But in our efforts to celebrate and affirm God's presence in the home, we should be wary of elevating the vocation of homemaking above all others by insinuating that for women, God's presence is somehow restricted to that sphere. If God is the God of all pots and pans, then He is also the God of all shovels and computers and paints and assembly lines and executive offices and classrooms. Peace and joy belong not to the woman who finds the right vocation, but to the woman who finds God in any vocation, who looks for the divine around every corner. ~ Rachel Held Evans

The executive possesses means of distracting Parliament from its proper function; it seduces members by the offer of places and pensions, by retaining them to follow ministers and ministers' rivals, by persuading them to support measures - whereby the activities of administration grow beyond Parliament's control. These means of subversion are known are known collectively as corruption, and if ever Parliament or those who elect them - for corruption may occur at this point too - should be wholly corrupt, then there will be an end of independence and liberty. ~ J. G. A. Pocock

As a dad, you are Vice President. You are part of the Executive Branch of the family, but you are the partner with the weaker authority. In your children's eyes, you mostly fulfill a ceremonial role of attending pageants and ordering pizza. I'm never the first choice. My kids don't even mask it, which I respect them for. "Let's see, the crabby guy with the scratchy beard or that warm soft lady that tells us stories for eight hours?" It's not even close. ~ Jim Gaffigan

Everything is about accountability to the American people, accountability of the executive branch ... [and] accountability of the oversight of the Congress ~ Jay Rockefeller

In the movie 'Wall Street' I play Gordon Gekko, a greedy corporate executive who cheated to profit while innocent investors lost their savings. The movie was fiction, but the problem is real. ~ Michael Douglas

Well, the 'Giuliana & Bill' show is a little bit different because Giuliana and I are the executive producers of the show, so certainly we have a lot of control and we have total, I guess if we wanted to, editing power, but I will say, in the seven seasons we've done the show, we've never used our executive producer powers to cut something out. ~ Bill Rancic