We must protect big business from domination by fat- minded men whose principal business policy is to avoid a competitive race for efficiency† They believe in a system of soft enterprise,ösoft in the way that an octopus is soft, with tentacles that stifle and suffocate.

-Arnold,ThurmanWesley
  'The  Abuse of Patents', in  Atlantic Monthly,  Jul.

Efficiency†is measured at the extremities.You do not find the efficiency of an army at headquarters, nor of a firminhead office.It isattheremotest pointötheprivate soldier or humble legionary on the distant frontier, the girl at the counter or the branch-office junior salesman öthat the really decisive test of an army or a firm is made.It istherethat all theinstructionand knowledge of relevant facts and procedural disciplines bear fruitöor wither on the tree.

-Jay, SirAntony Rupert
  Management and Machiavelli.

All industrial efficiency consists in trying to do with eight men what we have hitherto been doing with ten men. It consists in creating unemployment.

-Robinson, (Edward) Austin George
The Structure of Competitive Industry.

Practical efficiency is common, and lofty idealism is not uncommon; it is the combination that is necessary, and that combination is rare.

-Roosevelt,Theodore
  Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography.

There are only two qualities in the world: efficiency and inefficiency, and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient.

-Shaw, George Bernard
  Tom Broadbent. John Bull's Other Island, act 4.