Matthew Stewart

“What do you need to succeed in business? You need the ability to think critically and communicate, and those things you can get just as easily out of a philosophy degree.”

“In order to produce generalist courses, business school professors have been forced to invent subjects called strategy, called organizational behavior and so on.”

“I would eventually leave the business in 1999 to work full-time as a writer, but during the previous decade, I would advise French businessmen on how to succeed in Germany; tell Americans what to do in Eastern Europe; show the Spanish how to become more like the Americans. I spent one particularly haunting year advising bankers in Mexico.”

“If you're working for somebody and trying to check on them, it never works. You're just saying what they want you to say at the end of the day.”

“George Washington participated as a vestryman in his local congregation, but that didn't really imply any particular kind of religious belief. This was necessary in order to participate in the society.”

“Like many of the ideas that mattered in the American Revolution, extraterrestrials got their start in antiquity. The Greek philosopher Epicurus speculated that the universe must be infinite, eternal and abounding in 'worlds' just like our own.”

“Sir Isaac Newton gave the extraterrestrials their biggest shot in the arm when he embraced the infinite universe as the basis for his hugely influential system of physics. Even so, the aliens of the early modern period remained creatures of philosophy rather than science.”

“America's revolutionary deists saw themselves as - and they were - participants in an international movement that drew on most of the same literary sources across the civilized world.”

“Generations of devoted American history buffs have spent countless hours reading and writing long books about the American Revolution without ever having come across the name of Dr. Thomas Young. Yet it was Young who came up with the idea for the original tea party - the one in Boston Harbor.”

“One of the distinguishing features of anything that aspires to the name of science is the reproducibility of experimental results.”

“At the decisive Boston town meeting of Nov. 29, 1773, while ships loaded with cargo from the East India Company idled in the harbor, Thomas Young was the first and only speaker to propose that the best way to protest the new Tea Act was to dump the tea into the water.”

“We mislead ourselves when we pretend we can make someone into an effective manager by putting them through a few courses in business school.”

“At its best, management theory is part of the democratic promise of America. It aims to replace the despotism of the old bosses with the rule of scientific law. It offers economic power to all who have the talent and energy to attain it.”

“During the seven years that I worked as a management consultant, I spent a lot of time trying to look older than I was. I became pretty good at furrowing my brow and putting on somber expressions.”

“There were about two years when I literally paid no rent anywhere in the world. Everyone's a contact, but there's no real human interaction. That's a very wearying thing.”

“Ethan Allen was convinced that every planet out there has its own intelligent extraterrestrials. And this, as you can imagine, is a radical, inspiring, but very unsettling, idea.”

“In the ideal scenario, consultants work for a board, and they're helping the board check on certain aspects of management. Their work is made public and transparent.”

“Businesspeople get a little bit of bad press sometimes. There are a lot of normal and ethical people.”

“Most religions assume that you find purpose through some agent that sits above or outside the world and imbues it with purpose.”

“Most management systems have to do with establishing trust and getting people to cooperate. They're not really about expertise or science.”