Favourite Sayings

This is a collection of some of my favourite sayings, which I am forever introducing into conversations whether they fit or not. I will group them into two categories: those I know that I have borrowed from others and those that I believe I have coined although they may also be unconsciously borrowed from others.

Who to blame: Me

• Why do politicians lie? Because it works.
• The Press is not interested in the truth. Never have been. Never will be. 
• The belligerence of youth is one of the most potent forces known.
• Experts are always right - that is until they are catastrophically wrong.
• It is easy to judge people from afar.
• If it's important, it won't be the lawyers who come.
• There is no prize at the end for the most mistakes.
• Be good to good people.
• Business is a contact sport.
• Heliocentrism is for mathematical wimps.
• It is the true master who understands that there is always more to learn.
• The devil may be in the details, but so are the angels.
• In weighing questions of right and wrong, it helps to remember that understanding has nothing to do with it.
• Many small successes will be better than one big disaster.
• Easy money can be a road to ruin.
• At a certain point, ignorance becomes villainy.
• As a general rule, people don't go to a restaurant for the food.
• Slagging the foundation does not flatter the building.
• The price of opulence is corruption. The only question is which one comes first.
• When asking for directions, it is always better to ask someone who has been down the road before.
• There is always something inside.
• We say more than we know.
• Although we may speak a language, we should recall that the language also speaks us.
• Sleep when you are exhausted, not when you're tired.
• Mathematicians can be dangerous.
• It is always amazing how generous people can be - with other people's money.
• Balance is everything. (Ignoring for the moment that this is a somewhat unbalanced declaration.)
• Abstractions attract. Particulars diverge.
• When a business is in trouble, two questions present themselves. Can it be saved? And should it be saved? The answer to the first question is usually "yes" and the answer to the second question is often "no".
• Change is like flying - expect turbulence.
• Simplicity wins!
• Sometimes fortune throws you a bone.
• You cannot master a tool by studying it.
• The truth is a useful fiction.
• We are often at our most creative when we are deceiving ourselves.
• Money either works for you, or against you.
• In the past, the Devil might have quoted scripture to suit his ends, but today statistics would be his tool of choice.
• Sell Quality!
• Illusions are expensive.
• Content is weird - deal with it! 
• Some things are more miscellaneous than others.
• A business should be judged by its customers.
• What in the world is perfect?
• In business as in life, it's always a good idea to dance first.
• All businesses are caricatures - or at least should be.
• Technology is too important to be left to technologists.
• There is a time for everything - even thinking.
• The key is to apply big ideas to small problems. Typically we do the reverse - applying small ideas to big problems.
• The trick is to do complex things with simple tools. More often than not, we find ourselves doing simple things with complex tools.
• You can't think outside the box - when you are the box.
• The battle for the basement is not a battle that can be won.
• Luxury, leisure, security: pick two.
• What you own - owns you.
• Organization happens!
• There are no accidents - only mistakes.
• Advancement is powered by the dynamic interaction of theory and practice. 
• Quality should be understood as the correspondence of requirements and results.
• Before something can be managed, it must be understood.
• You cannot manage what you don't understand, and you don't understand what you have not done.
• Looking for leadership vision amongst accountants is a little like looking for chastity in a brothel - you might find it but everyone will suspect, with good reason, that you were really looking for something different.
• Don't get me wrong, I like engineers - I think everyone should have one. (Other variations substitute academics, scientists and even business philosphers for engineers.)
• On those occasions when I have been told that "Vision without execution is hallucination", a quote usually attributed to Thomas Edison, I can never resist making the rejoinder that "Execution without vision is suicide" and then requiring that both maxims be accepted.
• While it is true that you cannot make a silk purse from a sow's ear, the reverse is even more true because a sow's ear has a practical purpose.
• Leadership is about embodying purpose. Management is about embodying performance. Business is about embodying value. All are necessary.
• Knowledge embodies understanding.
• To the extent that you understand something, you become responsible for it.
• Knowledge, insofar as it bestows responsibility, can be a curse.
• Knowledge is a curse.(When someone declares that they do not agree, I usually cannot resist adding a playful rejoinder - "You'll have to take my word for it.")
• While it may be true that knowledge is a curse, ignorance, on the other hand, is a crime.
• Knowledge is a shared understanding that persists.
• Knowledge has a price, and someone has to pay.
• Hypertext is text that does something.
• Shadow-boxing doesn't count.
• Few things are more complex than simplicity.
• It is only when you slow down that the small things become visible.
• By definition, solutions are invisible.
• Forgetting can be as important as remembering.
• If it has a history, it has a future.
• It's not only the good ideas that survive.
• No end escapes its means.
• A theory is practical precisely because it is abstract.
• The road to hell is paved with...spreadsheets. 

Who to blame: Others

• The supply of "good causes" is inexhaustible. (Peter Drucker)
• See mystery to mathematics fly! (Alexander Pope)
• When you're finished changing - you're finished. (Benjamin Franklin)
• A Perfection of means and a confusion of aims seems to be our main problem. (Albert Einstein)
• Litera scripta manet - The written word endures.
  (proverb, sometimes attributed to Horace, inscribed on the ceiling of the Librarian's Room in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress)
• Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach. (Aristotle)
• Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
  (Martin Luther King Jr.)
• Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. (Samuel Johnson)
• For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. (Richard Feynman) 
• Let no man look for much progress in the sciences unless natural philosophy be carried on and applied to particular arts, and particular arts be carried back again to natural philosophy. (Francis Bacon)
• The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it. (Karl Marx)
• However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. (Sir Winston Churchill)
• Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create. (Albert Einstein)
• He who has a why can endure any how. (Nietzsche)
• Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age. (Jonathan Swift)
• A little learning is a dangerous thing. (Alexander Pope)
• Fortune favours the prepared mind. (Louis Pasteur)
• When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber. (Sir Winston Churchill)
• Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes. (Oscar Wilde)
• The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. (Socrates)
• Knowing is not enough; we must apply. (Goethe)
• Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which he cannot apply will make no man wise. (Samuel Johnson)
• Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. (Albert Einstein)
• Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify. (Henry David Thoreau)
• Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination. (Albert Einstein)
• Knowledge must come through action; you can have no test which is not fanciful except by trial.(Sophocles)
• Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal. (T.S. Eliot)
• Do the right thing, have fun, make money - in that order. (Yuri Rubinsky)
• Fine words! I wonder where you stole them. (Jonathan Swift)