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
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
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
What our country really needs most are those things which money cannot buy.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Money
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
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
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Character, Doing, Security
Seven national crimes: 1. I don’t think. 2. I don’t know. 3. I don’t care. 4. I am too busy. 5. I leave well enough alone. 6. I have no time to read and find out. 7. I am not interested.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Failure
A man is judged by the company he keeps, and a company is judged by the men it keeps, and the people of Democratic nations are judged by the type and caliber of officers they elect.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Democracy
You cannot raise a man up by calling him down.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Criticism, Motivation
A man without religion or spiritual vision is like a captain who finds himself in the midst of an uncharted sea, without compass, rudder and steering wheel. He never knows where he is, which way he is going and where he is going to land.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Religion
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
No man can make good during working hours who does the wrong thing outside of working hours.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Work
It is better to be old-fashioned and right than to be up-to-date and wrong.
—William J. H. Boetcker
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
The individual activity of one man with backbone will do more than a thousand men with a mere wishbone.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Getting Going, Inaction, Procrastination, Action, Men
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
Nations begin to dig their own graves when men talk more of human rights and less of human duties.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Your success depends mainly upon what you think of yourself and whether you believe in yourself.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Confidence, Assurance
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
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: Work, Business
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
True religion is not a mere doctrine, something that can be taught, but is a way of life. A life in community with God. It must be experienced to be appreciated. A life of service. A living by giving and finding one’s own happiness by bringing happiness into the lives of others.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Service, Giving, Religion, Kindness
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
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
Before you can write a check, you must first make out a deposit slip; before you can draw money out of a bank, you must put money into a bank; before you are entitled to a living, you must give the world a life; if you want to make a first-class living, learn to give the world a first-class life.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Life
You can succeed if nobody else believes it, but you will never succeed if you don’t believe in yourself.
—William J. H. Boetcker
Topics: Awareness, Realization, Acceptance
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
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