"In the 1950s, industrial workers had become the largest single group in every developed country, and unionized industrial workers in mass-production industry had attained upper-middle-class income levels. They had extensive job security, pensions, long paid vacations, and comprehensive unemployment insurance or "lifetime employment." Above all, they had achieved political power... Thirty-five years later, in 1990, industrial workers and their unions were in retreat. They had become marginal in numbers. Whereas industrial workers who make or move things had accounted for two fifths of the American work force in the 1950s, they accounted for less than one fifth in the early 1990s--that is, for no more than they had accounted for in 1900, when their meteoric rise began... By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast... By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast."

“The tool user, provided the tool is made well, need not, and indeed should not, know anything about the tool.”

“The only thing we know about the future is that it is going to be different.”

“That the government's power under the Taft-Hartley Act to stop a strike by injunction so clearly strengthens the hand of the employer--even though it is used only when a strike threatens the national health, welfare, or safety--is a grave blemish and explains much of union resistance to the Act.”

“Those German businessmen and industrialists, who, lured by the denunciation of fascism as antisocialist, concluded that it must be procapitalist, have since learned the better. But whereas originally the Right in France and England favored resistance to fascism, the slogan of the inevitable Russo-German war has made a large section favor the fascist advance, so that ‘both monsters devour each other.’”

“Tomorrow everybody - or practically everybody - will have had the education of the upper class of yesterday, and will expect equivalent opportunities. That is why we face the problem of making every kind of job meaningful and capable of satisfying every educated man.”

“...what's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people. There is no excuse for it. No justification. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we will pay a heavy price for it.”