Charles E. Wilson Quotations

No plan can prevent a stupid person from doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time - but a good plan should keep a concentration from forming.

That the way to achieve higher standards of living for all is through science and technology, taking advantage of better tools, methods and organization.

Unfortunately, in collective bargaining one party or the other too often tries to gain an advantage - a bargain, like buying something in a store for less than it is worth.

Our thinking behind these agreements is that we want all jobs in General Motors to be good jobs.

The thing that contributes to anyone's reaching the goal he wants is simple wanting that goal badly enough.

The prices of raw materials do not fluctuate directly with the labour cost of producing them.

No one should suffer from the great delusion that any form of communism or socialism which promotes the dictatorship of the few instead of the initiative of the millions can produce a happier or more prosperous society.

Canada has great natural resources, and its people have the spirit and ability to develop them.

Many people do not realize that where unions have bargaining rights employers cannot raise wages or improve benefit plans any more than they can reduce them without of the consent of the union.

No one should be so naive as to think that wages among organized groups will not be increased, under pressure if necessary, to make up for increases in the cost-of-living, nor should anyone ordinarily object to such adjustments.

For more than 150 years free men in our countries have had the opportunities to educate themselves, choose their own religions, select their own occupations, accumulate capital and invent better ways of doing things.

If workmen are denied any increase in real wages and they can look forward only to a better standard of living through reduction of prices, progress for them is terribly slow, and they become impatient and dissatisfied.

That it is logical, fair and reasonable to maintain the purchasing power of an hour's work in terms of goods and services the employee must purchase in his daily living.

Furthermore, there is no good ethical or economic reason for asking workmen and current producers to forego all economic gain in order to increase the purchasing power of all the wealth accumulated in past years.

There is no royal road; you've got to work a good deal harder than most people want to work.

The only sound approach to collective bargaining is to work out an agreement that clarifies the rights and responsibilities of the parties, establishes principles and operates to the advantage of all concerned.

Costs of manufactured articles importantly depend on the cost of raw materials as well as labour.

Your future is still before you. Your land is a vast storehouse of mineral and agricultural wealth awaiting further development for the benefit of mankind. It potentialities are magnificent.

In my fifty years of experience and memory, I have seen the most amazing increase in the standard of living of a people ever achieved anywhere in the world. This is why I am so sure that our system of free competition and industrial development is sound and must be preserved.

Our recent 5-year labour agreements, in Canada as well as the United States, are based upon experience, logic and principle rather than on pressure, propaganda and force.

That co-operation and peace rather than industrial strife and strikes will best promote the prosperity of the employees the company and all of the people and even strengthen the nation.

There may be some backward countries where the mass of the people are on a subsistence level and where, as an aftermath of wars or partial crop failures, the standard of living has to be drastically reduced, but this certainly is not the case in our prosperous nations.

A study of the history of wages back through the years indicates clearly that when the cost-of-living rises appreciably wages have shortly been adjusted upward also.

Furthermore, the spirit of enterprise which had its first intellectual development in England has especially flourished here as well as throughout all of Canada, while the same spirit has become less virile in the land of its origin.

Our expanding Canadian operations are concrete evidence of General Motors confidence in Canada.

I would have to be the repository of the corporate memory. I would have to make sure what we did the last three years is relevant to what we do in the next three years.

We've been wearing sweaters and hats. We had plastic put over the windows outside too.

People in, say, Georgia aren't sitting on the front porches singing anymore. They're inside in the air-conditioning, watching cable like everybody else.

It is futile to talk too much about the past . . . like trying to make birth control retroactive.

We have never gotten past this round in the playoffs, so the girls are taking this game very seriously. The girls want to get a win, and they will do whatever it takes to get it done.

When the economy slows, people tend not to go on holiday, but they will spend more on small-ticket items like eating out.

But I have always liked bird dogs rather than kennel-fed dogs myself -- you know, one that will get out and hunt for food rather than sit on his fanny and yell.

I don't think that Redwood National Park is an appropriate place for a sewage treatment plant. What kind of a message are you sending from this wonderful area up here? We think that we put $2 billion into a park and then we turn it into a sewage treatment plant.