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Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward. Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
concession speech, 6/7/08
May you always have;
Love to share
Health to spare and
Friends that care
Life is a gift
Live every day as a thank you note.
anon
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass,
It's about learning to dance in the rain!
anon
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift;
that's why they call it the present
Eleanor Roosevelt
Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise,
I say ignore the bastard
John Steinbeck
I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your
review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.
German
composer Max Reger
It is easy to say that the wound has begun to heal, but it is not
a wound. It is a tumor for which time is not a cure.
Story in LA Times on Vietnam
Problems and Solutions:
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
H.L. Mencken
A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main
problem.
Albert Einstein
We tend to seek easy, single-factor explanations of success. For most important things,
though, success actually requires avoiding many separate possible causes of failure.
The Anna Karenina principle
Guns, Germs,
and Steel
Jared Diamond
If you don't want to be disappointed at the end, ask the
hard questions at the beginning--and do the hard work to answer those questions.
Judy Rosenbum in Fast Company
Reason and logic are the play tools for the philosopher
in "everyman." They allow him to work very hard without damaging how life
really works.
Anon
To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
Anon
"How to's" are like having a map without knowing where you
are.
Anon
Procedures are what you do and how to do things. Policies are why people perform the procedures, and incorporate: metrics, applicable regulations, the policy authority and consequences if procedures are not followed.
Anon
Separate the catnip from the kitty litter.
Kitty Kelley
If a train station is where a train stops, then what's my
work station?
If aliens are smart enough to travel through space, why do
they keep abducting the dumbest people on earth?
Winston
ad in Wired magazine
More, better and different are ways of working with the problem
in the foreground. Change requires working with the cause in the background.
Stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?
Will Rogers
You cannot solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You must rise
above it to the next level.
Albert Einstein
If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
Arthur Kasspe
One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of
entities required to explain anything
Religion:
The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by Homo Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not receive this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history.
Robert Heinlein
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent
that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart
H.L. Mencken
Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense.
Robert Heinlein
Creator - A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh
H.L. Mencken
Politics and religion, like art and music, aim to accomplish the same thing, which is to overcome absurdity with meaning. Religion does this by seeing God's hand in history. Politics does it by affirming that, if history is all there is, it is enough.
James Carroll
The Boston Globe.
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EPITAPH FOR EARTH
“We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.”
Kurt Vonnegut
Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.
Oystein Dahle
former VP of Exxon for
Norway and the North Sea
I would say the best moment [of my presidency] was when I caught a 7 1/2-pound largemouth bass on my lake.
Government:
Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability
to think the same thing out twice.
H.L. Mencken
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half the time.
E. B. White, New Yorker, July 3, 1944
There is no way to peace along the way of safety. ... peace must be dared, it is
itself the great venture, and can never be safe.
Those who think they're too smart to engage in politics will
be governed by those who are dumber
Plato
If you don't visit a bad neighborhood, it will visit you.
Thomas L. Friedman
These are leaders who remind us that change happens when you connect with, rather
than oppose,the fundamental forces of human nature.
Ed. Fast Company Nov '00 p20
There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle,
than to initiate a new order of things.
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Business and management:
Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.
General Colin Powell, Chairman (Ret), Joint Chiefs of Staff in "A Leadership Primer"
... there is not a major company that I interviewed for this book [The World is Flat] that
is not investing significantly in research and development abroad. It is not
"follow the money." It is "follow the brains."
Thomas L. Friedman
commenting on U.S. education
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is save all the pieces
Aldo Leopold
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
Thomas Edison
Never, ever approach a computer saying or even thinking "I will just do this quickly."
Anon
If you torture a statistic long enough, it will confess to anything.
Courage is that rare moment of unity between conscience, fear and action, when something
deep within us strikes the flint of love, of honor, of duty, to make the spark that
fires our resolve. It's the moment -- however brief or singular -- when we are our
complete, best self, when we know with an almost metaphysical certainty that we are right.
Senator John McCain
FC 9/04 p16
Shinseki committed candor
Army Chief of Staff disagreeing with Rumsfeld
This web project is
the most self-indulgent, egotistical thing I have ever done in my life.
But the day is young.
I can top it.
Dilbert/Scott Adams
The true role of strategy is to describe a future worth creating--
and then to reap the competitive advantage of preparing for it and making it happen.
Pierre Wack Shell Oil
Fast Company 7/02
"We do try to keep up with major changes. But we keep up slowly."
U.S. Army re change in dress code
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are
easy if both are frozen.
Edward V. Berard
Life-Cycle Approaches
... the wet-ware of top dollar IT staff ...
George Gilder
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which
should not be done at all.
Peter Drucker
Projects are the delivery mechanism to transform ideas into business value in an organization.
CA Clarity brochure
That's life:
If lawyers are disbarred and
clergymen defrocked,
doesn't it follow that
electricians can be delighted,
musicians denoted,
cowboys deranged, models deposed
and dry cleaners depressed?
Laundry workers could decrease,
eventually becoming depressed and depleted! Even
more,
bedmakers will be debunked,
baseball players will be debased,
landscapers will be deflowered,
bulldozer operators will be degraded,
organ donors will be delivered,
software engineers will be detested,
the BVD company will be debriefed,
and even musical composers will eventually decompose.
On a more positive note though, perhaps we can hope
politicians will be devoted.
More, better and different are ways of working with the problem
in the foreground. Change requires working with the cause in the background.
The story of your life is your story, not your life.
John Barth
I have been described as painting a gloomy picture. I'd like
to suggest my only instrument is a lamp, not a paintbrush. All I'm doing
is shedding light on a painting already complete.
Peter de Jager Statement Y2k
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The nature of man:
I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.
Albert Einstein
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
Robert Heinlein
The truth is safe as long as no one looks for it
anon
When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear
and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw
You should be open minded but not so open minded that your brains
fall out.
Michael Shermer
When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing
matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.
George Bernard Shaw
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
Winston Churchill
...common sense that has been
suppressed by thinking.
Fast Company March '04 p42
Luck is a label, not an explanation
Anon.
The object of golf is not just to win. It is to play like a gentleman, and win.
Phil Mickelson
The Economist
To know what is possible tomorrow, you must be willing to
step outside of what is possible today.
Toshiba Advertisement
The grand paradox of Time is that we need it in order to change,
but in receiving it we are robbed of our passion to change.
anon
People act on what is urgent, not what is important.
anon
A coach is someone who makes you do what you don't want to
do so you can be who you say you want to be.
A coach doesn't provide something you don't know. They
provide something you don't see.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
old U.S. Marine adage
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man
to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Teach him how to learn and he
will be able to eat something in addition to fish.
Annon.
Humans invented language to satisfy their deep need to
complain.
Lily Tomlin
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Albert Einstein
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain -- most fools do.
Ben Franklin
Evolution provides a remarkably effective way to find needles of good design in haystacks of possibility.
Daniel Dennett
The Economist
Man keeps looking for a truth that fits his reality. Given our reality, the truth doesn't fit.
Up to your Ass in Aphorisms
Life is game. In order to have a game something has to be more important than something else. If what already is, is more important than what isn't, the game is over. So, life it is a game in which what isn't is more important that what is.
Up to your Ass in Aphorisms
In the hunter-gatherer era, if we didn’t find food, we died. In the agricultural era, if our crops perished, we died. In the industrial era, famine receded, but infectious diseases killed us. Now we’ve achieved such control over nature that we’re dying not of starvation or infection, but of abundance. Nature isn’t killing us. We’re killing ourselves.
Love and relationships:
Forgiveness doesn't come with a debt.
Song: I Take My Chances
Mary Chapin Carptenter
Love doesn't come with conditions, forgiveness doesn't come with a mortgage and
coaching doesn't come with an explanation.
Nagging is a one-way conversation with one speaker and no listeners
Modern times:
Take a deep breath, and give yourself the appropriate
amount of time to accomplish the impossible.
Bill Strickland Fast Co. Nov '00 p442
Everything happens faster now--which means that short-term thinking has long-term
consequences sooner.
Fast Company May '00 p334
Few people ever thought that during a recovery effort they'd have to
ask the question: "Who is alive?"Contingency Planning
& Lessons from 9/11
Everything goes wrong every minute. What you do is fix it.
Lt. General Gus Pagonis
in charge of logistics for Desert Storm
You leave college to go out and slay a dragon and save the world. But soon you find there are no dragons, at least in your neighborhood. So you campaign against an occasional lizard.
anon
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