When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.
Robert M Pirsig
Learn as much by writing as by reading.
Lord Acton
Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it.
Lord Acton
Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
Lord Acton
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton
Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.
Lord Acton
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
Let no one who has the slightest desire to live in peace and quietness be tempted,
under any circumstances, to enter upon the chivalrous task of trying to correct a popular error.
William Thoms, deputy librarian for the House of Lords, c. 1873
What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull.
The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more caressing.
H L Mencken
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
Douglas Adams
See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you
will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
Douglas Adams
The problem with the emotions is not that they are untamed forces or vestiges
of our animal past; it is that they were designed to propagate copies of
the genes that built them rather than to promote happiness, wisdom, or moral
values.
Steven Pinker
Creative people are at their most creative when writing their autobiographies.
Steven Pinker
Your job is to ask, How could we do it? How could we do it better? How
could we do it cheaper? How else could we do it?
Ben Krofchak
It is curious to be treated by the old-fashioned people as a criminal because
my thoughts and ways are beyond them.
Edward Elgar
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as we
do when a baby gets a hold of a hammer. It's just a question of how much
damage he can do with it before we take it away from him.
Will Rogers
Then they came for
me.
Stephen F Rohde
The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of
morality by religion.
Arthur C Clarke
Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are
all dead.
John Maynard Keynes
Principles don't change with circumstances. That's what makes them principles.
George Colombo
Dogs have owners. Cats have staff.
Unknown
Any new idea must be repeated at least seven times before it has a chance
of adoption in the enterprise.
Springer's Law
.....and will then be claimed by someone else higher up the chain as their
idea.
Martin Richmond-Hardy
We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to
form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in lfe
we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method
it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion,
inefficiency and demoraliztion.
Petronius Arditor, 66 A.D.
Core competence, as it is used by many managers, is a dangerously inward-looking
notion. Competitiveness is far more about doing what customers value than
doing what you think you're good at.
Clayton Christensen, The Innovator's Solution
Everything worth doing starts with fear.
Art Garfunkel
People are basically honest. And they're even more honest when you watch
them.
Alan C. "Ace" Greenberg
Ideas are to innovation as sex is to child rearing.
A known person who modestly chooses to remain anonymous.
At every step of the decision process, our minds filter out relevant information,
rely on flawed rules of thumb, and direct us toward the known and away from
the unknown.
Paul JH Schoemaker
On the supposed perils of exposing information: "The problem is not
that people might steal your ideas and secrets. The problem is that nobody
cares about your ideas and secrets."
Anil Menon
The basic rule of human nature is that powerful people speak slowly and
subservient people quickly—because if they don't speak fast nobody
will listen to them.
Michael Caine
Everything looks like a failure in the middle. In neary every change project,
doubt is cast on the original vision because problems are mounting and the
end is nowhere in sight.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years,
plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children.
Confucius
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, employ someone
to do it, or forbid your children from doing it.
Monta Crane
Failures are divided into two classes; those who thought and never did,
and those who did and never thought.
John Charles Salak
We have met the enemy and he is us.
Walt Kelly (via his cartoon character Pogo), 1971
I have a great diet. You're allowed to eat anything you want, but you must
eat it with naked fat people.
Ed Bluestone
Life at work is like a tree full of monkeys, all on different limbs at
different levels. Some monkeys are climbing up, some down. The monkeys on
top look down and see a tree full of smiling faces. The monkeys on the bottom
look up and see nothing but arseholes.
Anon
Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it's done, they've seen
it done every day, but they are unable to do it themselves.
Brendan Behan
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those
who have not got it.
George Bernard Shaw
Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
in the real world.
Mary Shafer (NASA Ames Dryden)
In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naïve and simple-minded
than we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves.
Dostoevsky
"Architecture" - the art and science of making those decisions that will
be hardest to change.
Ian Farbrother (paraphrased)
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always
so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
Landing variants defined:
To the Man in the Arena
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred
by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up
short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions
and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows the triumph
of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails
while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and
timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
attributed to Theodore Roosevelt
For most people it is far more difficult to decide what they are trying
to do than to describe how they propose to set about it.
C Northcote Parkinson, in The Law of Delay
The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance
begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.
C Northcote Parkinson
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a metaphor is worth a thousand
pictures.
Alan Kay, computer scientist
Legacy applications are those that work.
Peter Bye
Inspiration is the impact of a fact on a prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur
You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only
decide how you're going to live. Now.
Joan Baez
All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence
on the appreciation of others.
Cyril Connolly (1903-74), British critic. Enemies of Promise, ch. 16
(1938).
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe
that something inside them was superior to circumstances
Bruce Barton
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts
John Wooden
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple,
awesomely simple, that's creativity.
Charles Mingus
If you are trying to get to the moon, climbing a tree, although a step
in the right direction, will not prove to be very helpful.
Bob Jueneman
The most dangerous strategy is to cross the chasm in two leaps.
Bob Jueneman
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct
or more uncertain of success than to take a lead in the introduction of
new things, because the innovation has for enemies all those who have done
well under the old conditions and only luke-warm defenders in those who
may do well under the new.
Machiavelli
There is nothing so inefficient as doing efficiently that which should
not be done at all.
Unknown
The joy of life is made up of obscure and seemingly mundane victories that
give us our own small satisfactions.
Billy Joel
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
"Hanlon's Razor"
A closed mouth gathers no feet.
Finster's Law
Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.
stolen from Mitra's .sig
It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception,
is composed of others.
John Andrew Holmes
I intend to live forever—or die trying.
Vila
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys
to teenage boys
P.J. O'Rourke
Make a faster machine and people will flock to inefficient software.
John C. Dvorak from the May 1993 issue of DEC Professional
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
Lazarus Long
The least flexible component of any system is the user
Lowell Jay Arthur
The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced;
the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments
to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go
bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC
Designing pages in HTML is a lot like having sex in a bathtub. If you
don't know anything about sex, it won't help to know a lot about bathtubs.
stolen from Michael L. Kaufman's .sig
It is a simple task to make things complex, but a complex task to make
them simple.
Meyer's Law
People always pay too much attention to things that are easy to quantify.
Examples: money vs. happiness, blood pressure vs. fitness, grades vs. competency.
Corollary: If you want people to pay attention, make it quantifiable.
Jim Ehrlich, jehrlich@dairyvets.com
Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.
Michael de Montaigne
There is no limit to what you can accomplish as long as you don't care
who gets the credit.
Roy Beers
Your true character is most accurately measured by how you treat those
who can do nothing for you.
Roy Beers
Always do what you believe to be right—even though it may not be the
easy way out or the least painful path.
Roy Beers
Once convinced, have the courage of your conviction.
Roy Beers
Be tolerant, patient and understanding right up to the point that a decision
must be made. Then be clear, firm and unwavering.
Roy Beers
Seek to have people around you who ask a different set of questions from
you.
Roy Beers
Take the time to care and help. Everyone is important and all of their
problems are important.
Roy Beers
Two things in life stand like stone: kindness in another's trouble, and
courage in your own.
Roy Beers
Be a class act. Class seems to be inextricably related to kindness, consideration,
and a general recognition of human worth.
Roy Beers
Technical achievements, however necessary and important, have a way of
being momentary - fundamental values endure forever.
Roy Beers
Never lose your sense of humor—it's all that's left when every other
emotion is too terrible to contemplate.
Roy Beers
TO LAUGH is to risk appearing the fool. TO WEEP is to risk appearing sentimental. TO REACH OUT is to risk involvement. TO EXPOSE FEELINGS is to risk exposing your true self. TO PLACE YOUR IDEAS AND DREAMS BEFORE THE CROWD is to risk their love. TO LOVE is to risk not being loved in return. TO LIVE is to risk dying. TO HOPE is to risk dispair. TO TRY is to risk failure. BUT THE GREATEST HAZARD IN LIFE is to risk nothing."Catch The Spirit," by Dr. Grissom