These downsizing quotes will inspire you. Downsizing is the permanent reduction of a company’s labor force through the elimination of unproductive workers or divisions.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging downsizing quotes, downsizing sayings, and downsizing proverbs.
Best Downsizing Quotes
- “Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.” ~ George Carlin
- “Downsizing budgets may be necessary, but downsizing dreams is a decision to be disappointed.” ~ William J. Clinton
- “In practice, downsizing is too often about cutting your work force while keeping your business the same, and doing so not by investments in productivity-enhancing technology, but by making people pull 80-hour weeks and bringing in temps to fill the gap.” ~ James Surowiecki
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“Downsizing itself is an inevitable part of any creatively destructive economy.” ~ James Surowiecki
- “A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.” ~ Steve Jobs
- “It’s hard to get fired from the government. You have to, like, kill people.” ~ Wanda Sykes
- “Learn to say no in situations where saying no can be difficult, where it could mean getting fired. Say no anyway, because it could lead you to greater opportunities.” ~ Samuel Dash
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“There’s nothing wrong with being fired.” ~ Ted Turner
- “If you don’t win, you’re going to be fired. If you do win, you’ve only put off the day you’re going to be fired.” ~ Leo Durocher
- “It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “I mean, there’s no arguing. There is no anything. There is no beating around the bush. ‘You’re fired’ is a very strong term.” ~ Donald Trump
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“You never ask why you’ve been fired because if you do, they’re liable to tell you.” ~ Jerry Coleman
- “In this remarkable time for the world, I refuse to believe it’s time to stop believing in the possibilities of our remarkable country. I refuse to accept the downsizing of the American Dream. I refuse to bet against American entrepreneurial spirit and American ingenuity.The competition’s tough, and it requires us to be tougher – tough-minded, never hard hearted.” ~ John F. Kerry
- “I am still in shock and awe at being fired.” ~ Peter Arnett
- “The company calls it ‘downsizing’ or ‘rightsizing.’ My own informal “Name the Layoff” contest produced some other euphemisms: Retroactive Hiring Freeze, Resume Revision Days, Amway Opportunity Time, and Corporation Lite.” ~ Dale Dauten
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“My agent said, “You aren’t good enough for movies.” I said, “You’re fired.”” ~ Sally Field
- “Every time you walk down the street people are screaming, ‘You’re fired!'” ~ Donald Trump
- “Okay, well, I guess I’m still a kid. Because when I get really angry and fired up and I feel like my back is up against the wall, I will say vicious things.” ~ Howard Stern
- “Actually, I began to think that maybe there is a god, after all. Or maybe its a different one. The old one got fired.” ~ Terry Gilliam
- “Managers tend to treat organizations as if they are infinitely plastic. They hire and fire, merge, downsize, terminate programs, add capacities. But there are limits to the shifts that organizations can absorb.” ~ Kevin Kelly
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“I don’t even like firing people. I don’t think I’ve ever said, ‘You’re fired’ to anybody.” ~ Martha Stewart
- “It can be liberating to get fired because you realize the world doesn’t end. There’s other ways to make money, better jobs.” ~ Ron Livingston
- “I went out there for a thousand a week, and I worked Monday, and I got fired Wednesday. The guy that hired me was out of town Tuesday.” ~ Nelson Algren
- “Some actors get fired up by the sound of the audience. I just want to retreat.” ~ Francesca Annis
- “In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.” ~ Christian Nestell Bovee
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“I was fired from my television job, simple as that. Well, downsized, really, a classic 1990s situation.” ~ Lee Child
- “The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all ‘bottom line’ editors; everything depends on the money.” ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
- “Here’s the thing, you just have to drive a lot faster, and if you don’t get there, we’re both fired.” ~ Bill Murray
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“If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.” ~ Vince Lombardi
- “My mother always wanted me to be glamorous. When I thought about that, it really fired me up, and once I lost all those pounds, I started to feel really good about myself.” ~ Etta James
- “I think re-engineering or restructuring or downsizing or rightsizing or whatever you want to call it, it’s basically firing, has gone way too far. Employees, as I’ve talked to them across the country, feel that they are not respected, they are not valued, they are worried about their jobs. They simply feel that the company is no longer loyal to them. Why should they be loyal to the company, they ask me. Why should I go the extra mile? Why should I care?” ~ Robert Reich
- “In the days when corporate downsizing was all the rage, Wall Street took a lot of flak for judging companies too harshly and setting the bar for corporate performance so high that executives felt their only option was to slash payrolls.” ~ James Surowiecki
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“The corporate killer downsizing is directly responsive to what the mutual funds have wanted.” ~ Jim Cramer
- “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “Much of what is called investment is actually nothing more than mergers and acquisitions, and of course mergers and acquisitions are generally accompanied by downsizing.” ~ Susan George
- “Then, in the 1980’s, came the paroxysm of downsizing, and the very nature of the corporation was thrown into doubt. In what began almost as a fad and quickly matured into an unshakable habit, companies were ‘restructuring,’ ‘reengineering,’ and generally cutting as many jobs as possible, white collar as well as blue . . . The New York Times captured the new corporate order succinctly in 1987, reporting that… ‘All such allegiances are viewed as expendable under the new rules. With survival at stake, only market leadership, strong profits and a high stock price can be allowed to matter’.” ~ Barbara Ehrenreich
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“Coaching is nothing more than eliminating mistakes before you get fired.” ~ Lou Holtz
- “We should because when coaches get fired, the players have a lot to do with it.” ~ Allen Iverson
- “The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive.” ~ Lee Child
- “Synaptic summation is the technical term used in neurophysiology for those instances in which some neuron C is fired only by a combination of neurons A and B.” ~ Gregory Bateson
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“‘Dilbert’ became popular during the downsizing of the ’90s, and job security was a major theme of the strip.” ~ Scott Adams
- “Advertising was fairly simple work, and I really just wanted a job where I could sit and write every day and not get fired for it like I had at other jobs, but it was fun.” ~ John Hughes
- “I have had hundreds of people work for me over the years, and I don’t think I ever fired anybody.” ~ Tom T. Hall
- “I’d fired anyone who was involved with Creed. I didn’t want anything to do with the music business. The entire press and industry hated me, so what was the point?” ~ Scott Stapp
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“Once the fired stone is out of the kiln, it is still possible to mentally reconstruct it in its original form.” ~ Andy Goldsworthy
- “When I got the script for Memento, I read it and I got killed off on page one and I fired my agent.” ~ Joe Pantoliano
- “Eventually, I became involved with somebody and I was fired.” ~ Tommy Kirk
- “I only know that I fired twice, or perhaps several times, without knowing whether I had hit or missed” ~ Gavrilo Princip
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“I get all fired up about aging in America.” ~ Willard Scott
- “I recruited my dad to be my bass player and fired him on several occasions. He stayed on as a bus driver.” ~ Chely Wright
- “Well, yes, I’ve fired a lot of people. Generally I like other people to fire, because it’s always a lousy task. But I have fired many people.” ~ Donald Trump
- “When I was fired from my post as General of the Fighter Arm, I was to give proof that this jet was a superior fighter. And that’s when we did it. I think we did it.” ~ Adolf Galland
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“I used to be a window cleaner. I got fired because I sometimes liked to drink the soapy water.” ~ Jamelia
- “At some point, the world is going to have to bite the bullet and accept a huge downsizing in its way of life to bring the assets-to-debt ratio back in touch with reality.” ~ John L. Casti
- “Best Buy. I heard recently they are downsizing and I got sad! I remember when Circuit City was around, I never understood why people would shop there. I always thought Best Buy had a better selection and cheaper prices.” ~ Kerry King
- “In the career world we are downsizing. That means the one person that will keep their job will do three or four jobs for the same amount of money. You have to be that way these days.” ~ Michelle Visage
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“Downsizing trends and the changing global market require people to reinvent themselves and think like entrepreneurs.” ~ Les Brown
- “In a 91-part series of sob stories from the laid off and the disgruntled, The NY Times is in the midst of bemoaning ‘the downsizing of America’ – better known as ‘the whining of America.’ The cause of all the heartache, in the esteemed newspaper of record’s view, appears to be heartless corporate chieftains – as well as capitalism itself. Americans are moving forward, despite shackles. The shackles I am referring to are not NAFTA, not corporations. They are, instead, the barriers imposed by our own government.” ~ Rush Limbaugh
- “The concept of downsizing so that others might upgrade is biblical, beautiful…and nearly unheard of. We either close the gap or don’t take the words of the Bible literally.” ~ Francis Chan
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“After I was fired from Disney, I did some of the worst movies ever made…” ~ Tommy Kirk
- “Now, I have no doubt that Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his company Bain Capital and all of the jobs that they killed I’m sure he was worried he would run out of pink slips.” ~ Rick Perry
- “The problem is that affirmative action could never really get at the issue of corporate power in the workplace, and so you ended up with the downsizing; you ended up with de-industrializing. You ended up with the marginalizing of working people and working poor people even while affirmative action was taking place, and a new black middle class was expanding.” ~ Cornel West
