William J. H. Boetcker (1873–1962,) fully William John Henry Boetcker, was a German-born American Presbyterian minister, publisher, labor movement coordinator, and influential public speaker.
Born in Altona, a suburb of Hamburg, Boetcker published Neuster Ratzelschatz (1890,) a book of puzzles and riddles at age 17, becoming Germany’s youngest published author. He migrated to America with a study scholarship, arriving in Chicago in 1891. After attending Chicago Theological Seminary and German Theological School of Newark, New Jersey, he was ordained as a minister by the Reformed Church of America in 1897.
Boetcker served as a priest at the German Reformed Church in Brooklyn, New York, and the First German Presbyterian Church in Shelbyville, Indiana, before forsaking his role as a priest to become a coordinator of the labor movement. He rallied employers against extremist union organizers in Toledo, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He started a publishing company and issued works such as the pamphlets The Industrial Decalogue (1911.) He finally relocated to Geneva, Ohio, and ran his speaking and publishing businesses from Erie, Pennsylvania.
Boetcker became a prolific producer of written thoughts; his “Golden Nuggets” frequently appeared in newspapers. Boetcker sometimes used the pennames Tianus Tiorio (an acronym for “Truth in a Nutshell” and “Think It Over, Reason It Out!”) and Civis Americanus.
Some of Boetcker’s sayings are frequently misattributed to President Abraham Lincoln. According to Albert A. Woldman (Harper’s Magazine, May-1950,) Boetcker’s published The Ten Cannots (1916,) which emphasize the freedom and responsibility of the individual upon oneself. In 1942, a conservative political organization printed a leaflet with “Lincoln on Private Property,” containing the Lincoln’s 1864 communiqué to a committee from the Workingmen’s Association of New York, and his 1860 speech at New Haven, Connecticut. The other side of the leaflet contained Boetcker’s “Ten Cannots” on the other. Later reprints of this leaflet, sometimes titled “Lincoln on Limitations,” missed out Boetcker’s name, and implied that its entire content, including “Ten Cannots,” was Lincoln’s. Even President Ronald Reagan misattributed some Boetcker quotes to Lincoln in his 1992 address to the Republican National Convention in Houston.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William J. H. Boetcker
Are you appalled at existing conditions? Don’t waste your energy trying to change conditions from without! Change the Human Heart from within.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Human Nature
No man can make good during working hours who does the wrong thing outside of working hours.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Work
Most men believe that it would benefit them if they could get a little from those who have more. How much more would it benefit them if they would learn a little from those who know more.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Knowledge, Listening
When away from home always be like the kind of man you would care to take into your own home.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Manners
Every so often we hear people clamor for a change. Let’s change the Constitution, change the form of Government, change everything for better or worse except to change the only thing that needs changing first: The human heart and our standard of success and human values.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Change
A man who tries to make the workmen believe that their employers are their natural enemies is indeed the worst enemy of workmen. For the employees of yesterday are the employers of today, and the employees of today can and will partly be the employers of tomorrow.
—William J. H. Boetcker
You cannot raise a man up by calling him down.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Criticism, Motivational, Motivation
For the self-development of men and women it is absolutely necessary that they should be alone with themselves at least one hour each day — to get the blessings of solitude.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Solitude
What the carburetor, sparkplug and self-starter are to an automobile, initiative, private enterprise and executive ability are to industry as a whole, including the wage earner, wage payer, wage spender and wage saver, i.e., the investor. If the sparkplug and self-starter get out of commission, the car will come to a standstill.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Beginning
What a pleasure life would be to live if everybody would try to do only half of what he expects others to do.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Expectations
Your success depends mainly upon what you think of yourself and whether you believe in yourself.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Assurance, Confidence
What our country really needs most are those things which money cannot buy.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Money
The individual activity of one man with backbone will do more than a thousand men with a mere wishbone.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Action, Men, Getting Going, Procrastination, Inaction
Nations begin to dig their own graves when men talk more of human rights and less of human duties.
—William J. H. Boetcker
When men are so busy making money that they have no time for anything else, then the day is not far off when they will have no money for anything else.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Money
Confidence is the foundation for all business relations. The degree of confidence a man has in others, and the degree of confidence others have in him, determines a man’s standing in the commercial and industrial world.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Confidence
The more men, generally speaking, will do for a Dollar when they make it, the more that Dollar will do for them when they spend it.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Money
Think in the name of Almighty God. We must first have a worldwide awakening of the public conscience, a spiritual revival, a moral regeneration, before there can be permanent peace and real economic recovery. To this end we do not need new laws, but a new spirit; we do not need a change of government, but a change of the human heart. There can be no peace, there will be no recovery without it. Therefore, with a change of heart, let’s all make a new start.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: God
Freedom of press and freedom of speech: What a blessing for a country while in the hands of honest, patriotic men; what a curse if in the hands of designing demagogues.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Freedom
Many modern (so-called) Reformers are just as dangerous as the physician who makes a wrong diagnosis of a disease. They see the trouble from without and prescribe external remedies, while the cause of the trouble is within and needs internal treatment.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Trouble
You can employ men and hire hands to work for you, but you will have to win their hearts to have them work with you.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Business, Work
Beware of ignorance when in motion; look out for inexperience when in action, and beware of the majority when mentally poisoned with misinformation, for collective ignorance does not become wisdom.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Ignorance
If you want to know how rich you really are, find out what would be left of you tomorrow if you should lose every dollar you own tonight?
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Wealth, Self-Discovery
The difficulties and struggles of today are but the price we must pay for the accomplishments and victories of tomorrow.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Difficulties, Perseverance, Resolve, Endurance, Adversity
Men must be honest with themselves before they can be honest with others. A man who is not honest with himself presents a hopeless case.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Honesty
That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.
—William J. H. Boetcker
If the majority of people of a country, no matter how great its natural resources, organize and conspire to get more out and put less in, to do less and get more, how long will, how long can it last?
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Wealth
Never mind what others do; do better than yourself, beat your own record each and everyday, and you are a success.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Success
You can’t fly a kite unless you go against the wind and have a weight to keep it from turning a somersault. The same with man. No man will succeed unless he is ready to face and overcome difficulties and is prepared to assume responsibilities.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Problems, Courage, Confidence, Self-reliance
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Welfare, Doing, Independence, Security, Realism, Character
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