Mary Parker Follett Quotes

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  • Social Worker
  • 1868 - 1933
  • 84 quotes

Mary Parker Follett, Social Worker (1868 - 1933), is quoted 84 times on QuoteForever. The subjects that come up most often are People, Leadership, Unity and Done.

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All polishing is done by friction.

Democracy is self-creating coherence.

Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim.

Idealism and realism meet in the actual.

Fear of difference is fear of life itself.

Responsiblity is the great developer of men.

There is no such thing as vicarious experience.

The unifying of opposites is the eternal process.

Democracy must be conceived as a process, not a goal.

... orders come from the work, not work from the orders.

It is not opposition but indifference which separates men.

Management is the art of getting things done through people.

... good intentions are not sufficient to solve our problems.

Conflict is resolved not through compromise, but through invention.

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

It is of equal importance with the discovery of facts to know what to do with them.

We must face life as it is and understand that diversity is its most essential feature.

The state accumulates moral power only through the spiritual activity of their citizens.

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

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

Crowd action is the outcome of agreement based on concurrence of emotion rather than of thought.

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

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

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

Power-over is resorted to time without number because people will not wait for the slower process of education.

Coercive power is the curse of the universe, coactive power, the enrichment and advancement of every human soul.

Many people tell me what I ought to do and just how I ought to do it, but Few have made me want to do something.

the best leaders try to train their followers themselves to become leaders. ... they wish to be leaders of leaders.

Law should seek far more than mere reconciliation; it should be one of the great creative forces of our social life.

That is always our problem, not how to get control of people, but how all together we can get control of a situation.

we certainly do not want to abolish power, that would be abolishing life itself, but we need a new orientation toward it.

In crowds we have unison, in groups harmony. We want the single voice but not the single note; that is the secret of the group.

The insight to see possible new paths, the courage to try them, the judgment to measure results - these are the qualities of a leader.

We are sometime truly to see our life as positive, not negative, as made up of continuous willing, not of constraints and prohibition.

there is a pernicious tendency to make the opinions of the expert prevail by crowd methods, to rush the people instead of educating them.

Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, not absorbed.

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.

I am free when I am functioning here in time and space as the creative will. ... freedom by our definition is obedience to the law of one's nature.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

While leadership depends on depth of conviction and the power coming therefrom, there must also be the ability to share that conviction with others.

Concepts can never be presented to me merely, they must be knitted into the structure of my being, and this can only be done through my own activity.

The manager cannot share his power with division superintendent or foreman or workman, but he can give them opportunities for developing their power.

We can never catch up with life ... we shall always be eating the soft part of our melting ice and meanwhile the nice hard part is rapidly melting too.

administrative purpose usually outruns the facts. Indeed the administrative official's ardor for facts usually begins when he wants to change the facts!

We should never allow ourselves to be bullied by an either-or. There is often the possibility of something better than either of these two alternatives.

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.

What people often mean by getting rid of conflict is getting rid of diversity, and it is of the utmost importance that these should not be considered the same.

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.

Another idea that is changing is that the leader must be one who can make quick decisions. The leader to-day is often one who thinks out his decisions very slowly.

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