For a change of pace, I thought I’d do a quick post with some of my favorite quotes.
- “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.” — Dwight Eisenhower
- “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” — Peter Drucker
- “The single best question for testing an organization’s character is: what happens when people make mistakes?” — Bob Sutton
- “The only place success comes before work is the dictionary.” — Vince Lombardi
- “God laughs when Man plans.” — Yiddish Proverb
- “Maybe I’m a complete idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. This [cloud computing thing] is complete gibberish.” — Larry Ellison
- “Unix is snake oil.” — Ken Olsen
- “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
- “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” — Mark Twain
- “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” — Bill Gates
- “Predictions are difficult. Especially about the future.” — Yogi Berra / Niels Bohr
- “Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.” — Kurt Vonnegut
- “All companies go out of business for the same reason. They run out of money.” — Don Valentine
- “Man sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. Then he is so anxious about the future that he doesn’t enjoy the present: the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.” — The Dalai Lama
- “They never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” — Abba Eban
- “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” — Henry Ford
- “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” — Thomas Edison
- “The nine scariest words in the English language are: we’re here from corporate and we’re here to help.” — Adapted from Ronald Reagan
- “You who choose to lead must follow.” — Robert Hunter
Note: if you enjoy tracing quote attributions (and their correctness), then check out this site where I found the rather unlikely dual attribution to Yogi Berra and Niels Bohr.