"It is characteristic of executive roles that they are specialized for the handling of situations which call for something more than routine action. When business executives are asked what is the essential content of their roles, they characteristically say, 'We make decisions.' This emphasis on decision-making is symptomatic of a specialized concern of executives with situations in which there is significant uncertainty as to the results of proper courses of action."

“In contrast to such organizations as governments and universities, the prime criteria of business achievement are relatively definite and tangible. These standards include profitability, percentage control of the market, size of firm, and rate of growth.”

“Viewed schematically, the activities of governments involve first the politician, who buys votes for the party in power; then the impractical theorist in the civil service — usually a professor in disguise — who conceives grandiose and unworkable plans; finally, these are executed and administered by the hidebound bureaucrat. The characteristic vices of these three species of homo politicus differ, , but they share a common feature: the absence of those personal virtues possessed by businessmen. Their heads are neither clear, hard, nor level; none of them is really honest; all of them lack practical imagination and the desire to get things done.Their heads are neither clear, hard, nor level; none of them is really.”

“The logical reader can only conclude that had Mr. Du Pont been as devoted to the facts as Mr. Sloan alleges, he would have been paralyzed in indecision, or even more, he certainly have discontinued the production of Chevrolets.”

“Characteristically, the factors determining, the outcome of business efforts are numerous, and difficult both to assess and control. The sale of goods on a more or less free market is, of course, one major source of these difficulties; the disposition of buyers are subject to only limited control and prediction. They in turn are influenced by those diffuse but important factors which go under the label of general business conditions. Even within the context of a given firm there may be conditions and possible courses of action which may be beyond ready prediction and control. A great part of the efforts of entrepreneurs is directed towards minimising uncertainties.”

“A World to Make treats a subject that is both complex and controversial. Since the end of the Second World War, and with increasing rapidity in the 1950s and 1960s, Europe's former colonial possessions acquired independence and emerged as new states with new frontiers. That process proved to be immensely difficult both for those who had recently acquired their independence and for those in Latin America and elsewhere who had enjoyed that status for a century or longer.”

“There is a strong tendency among businessmen to emphasize that their decisions are based on 'facts' and thus to make favorable outcomes the consequence of perspicacity and 'judgment' rather than good fortune.”