Eric Johnston

Eric Allen Johnston (December 21, 1896 – August 22, 1963) was a business owner, president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, a Republican Party activist, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and a U.S. government special projects administrator and envoy for both Democratic and Republican administrations. As president of the MPAA, he abbreviated the organization's name, convened the closed-door meeting of motion picture company executives at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel that led to the Waldorf Statement in 1947 and the Hollywood blacklist (including firing of the Hollywood Ten), and discreetly liberalized the Motion Picture Production Code.

Quotes

We are too mealy-mouthed about the basic principle of our economic system. We have been intimidated by all the tirades against "bloated capitalists" and "swollen profits." We fear that the word capitalism is unpopular. So we take refuge in a nebulous phrase and talk about the "Free Enterprise System." And we even run to cover in the folds of the flag and talk about the "American Way of Life." ... We stand at a solemn parting of the ways. Our business leaders and our labor leaders want freedom. No American wants slavery. But what is the price of freedom? I say it is the capital with which to operate capitalism. The word is capitalism.
- "Your Stake in Capitalism", in Reader's Digest (February, 1943); repr. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, vol. 95, no. 167 (February 19, 1943), p. 6c. Quoted by Daniel A. Reed in the U.S. House of Representatives (February 2, 1943); Congressional Record: 78th Congress, vol. 89, pt. 9, app. (January 6 – March 27, 1943), p. a404, col. 2

The testimony of every scientist is that the frontiers that are opening out ahead of us now are far wider and more spectacular than any frontier of America in the past. Our horizons are not closed. We are going to write a greater development in America than has ever been conceived.
- Reported in Forbes, vol. 52, no. 6 (September 15, 1943), p. 38

The dinosaur's eloquent lesson is that if some bigness is good, an over-abundance of bigness is not necessarily better.
- Reported in Vital Speeches of the Day, vol. 24, no. 5 (December 15, 1957), p. 150

Beaten paths are for beaten men.
- Reported in Forbes, vol. 83, no. 4 (February 15, 1959), p. 70

Most government officials are rushing headlong to solve the problems of 50 years ago, with their ears assailed by the sound of snails whizzing by.
- Reported in John W. Gardner; Francesca Gardner Reese (eds.) Know or Listen to Those who Know (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1975), p. 215