TIME

'Time runs out for everyone, but the young can't hear it rushing under the bridge'.

Source: Clive James

DILIGENCE

‘Diligence is the mother of good luck’.

Source: Benjamin Franklin

ENTHUSIASM

‘A fly’s got enthusiasm but that doesn’t stop it head butting the window’.

Source: Alan Sugar, Series 6, The Apprentice (BBC).

PREDICTING THE FUTURE

‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers’

Source: Thomas Watson 1943. IBM Chairman.

LIVING DELIBERATELY

‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived’.

Source: Henry Thoreau. Also the film ‘Dead Poets Society’.

RISK MANAGEMENT

'What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail'?

Source: Robert Schuller. Combat Magazine (June 1998).

RISKS

To laugh is to risk being the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach for another is to risk involvement.
To show feelings is to risk showing yourself.

To place your ideas, your dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
Those who risk nothing, do nothing, have nothing and are nothing
They may avoid suffering and sorrow,
but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live.
Chained by their attitudes they are slaves,
They have forfeited their freedom.
Only a person who risks...is truly free.

Source: Anon. Theme of Brathay outward-bounds course for Leadership Development (1987).

CUSTOMER NEEDS

‘You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.’

Source: Steve Jobs

PROJECT BUDGETTING ON A BIBLICAL SCALE

‘For which of you, intending to build a tower, sits not down first and counts the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?’

Source: Holy Bible. Luke 14:28

NERD FRIENDLY

‘Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.’

Source: Bill Gates

LISTENING TO YOU, LISTENING TO ME

‘I don’t listen to myself when I talk; I listen to the other person’s listening…I’m trying to have it heard accurately.’

Source: Werner Erhard

TALENTS MUST BE EXPLOITED

‘People whose talents are not exploited become disenchanted and disruptive.’

Source: Sir Terence Conran.

IDEAS WON'T KEEP

'The vitality of thought is an adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.'

Source: Train carriage poster for the Judge Business School, Cambridge. From: Alfred North Whitehead, English mathematician & philosopher (1861 - 1947)

INNOVATION

‘Don’t accept that just because a thing has always been done a certain way that it will always be that way.'

Source: Mark McCormack

RULES & CREATIVITY

‘Most of the rules in society tend to restrict creativity to a safe level.’

Source: Sting

OBSTACLES

‘Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.’

Source: Henry Ford.

ADAPTABILITY

‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.’

Source: Charles Darwin.

MARKET RESEARCH

‘People don’t recognize what they want until it is put in front of them. That’s why market research is so much bunkum.’

Source: Sir Terrance Conran.

GROSS INCOMPETENCE

‘You, sir, are unfit to run a whelk stall let alone a PAID FOR SERVICE. Stand down, please, and let someone with more clout, more guts, more pride and more self-respect take over.’

Source: Mail of complaint titled 'Gross Incompetence' from Guardian Crossword user.
Ref: http://www.guardian.co.uk/crosswords/2008/may/06/crossword-editor-update1

GOOD DAYS AND BAD DAYS

‘Sometimes you are the hammer, sometimes you are the nail. Today I was the nail but I have been the hammer many times before'.

Source: Lance Armstrong (following his day of three crashes in the 2010 Tour De France).

GETTING OUTSIDE YOURSELF

'The trick is being able to get outside yourself and work from outside and watch yourself as an observer.'

Source: Virginia Wade

DON’T COMPROMISE

‘Don’t compromise, use the right equipment, use it the right way, go back and start again’.

Source: Ron Dennis (MacLaren F1 Team Principle) quoted in advert for an engineering company.

PREPARATION, THE AVOIDANCE OF SURPRISE

‘Nothing should ever come as a surprise. If something I haven’t anticipated comes as a surprise, I haven’t prepared properly’ [commentary: a bit like a downhill skier going through the course in his mind first]

Source: Andy Green (land speed record holder)

INTELLIGENCE AND HORSEPOWER

‘I like to think of intelligence as equivalent to the horsepower of a car. There may be a powerful car driven badly and a humble car driven well’.

Source: Edward De Bono

AGGREGATION OF MARGINAL GAINS

‘Once you understand this phrase, it’ll change your life...the desire of every member of the team to achieve an aggregation of marginal gains...it means breaking down cycling competitions and events into all of its component parts – and then trying to get improvements in every single area that may affect performance'.

Source: Dave Brailsford

THE GRADUATE

‘I want to make myself indestructible and indispensible.’

Source: A quotation from a graduate. Creative Review magazine (Sept 2010)

EATING HONEY

‘Although Eating Honey is a very good thing to do, there is a moment just before you begin to eat it which is better than when you are.’

Source: Winnie the Pooh (A. A. Milne)

FAILING EVERY NOW AND AGAIN

'If your not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.'

Source: Woody Allen

SOLUTIONEERING

‘I always feel like there is a solution’

Source: Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari)

SUCCESS FROM A PROCESS POINT OF VIEW

'Though he says there isn't anything secret about it, it is the simple application of method. Plus a belief in this presiding psychology: a sports practitioner simply needs to be the best they can be and then everything else will follow.
"You can't do better than your best," he says. "So what we have to do is ensure that every single rider performs at the absolute best of their ability. If that ability is going to be good enough then fantastic, but if it is not, it's not."
That doesn't sound particularly revolutionary. It sounds, in fact, more like a prep school games master telling his losing under-10 side that the score really isn't important, it's the taking part that counts.
"I know it sounds a bit woolly, but I know what we are saying. If Bradley [Wiggins] can be his absolute best throughout the Tour and perform to the highest level he can perform, that is success from a process point of view. If you start looking at the outcome in terms of just the result it is impacted on by so many other variables that you are putting yourself and your team under an massive amount of unnecessary pressure. The one thing you are in charge of is being your best." '

Source: Dave Brailsford http://www.telegraph.co.uk

WEB PAGE WEIGHTS

‘A picture is worth a thousand words, but it uses up three thousand times the memory’.

Source: Anon

PEOPLE TRUMP PROCESSES

People trump processes.
Process is only a second order effect, the unique people, their feelings, qualities and communication are more influential.
Some problems are just hard, some people are just difficult.
These methods are not salvation.

Source: Alistair Cockburn (Agile methodologist)

FOCUS ON THE ROUTE YOU WANT TO FOLLOW

'When negotiating steep drop offs on a mountain bike, be careful to only look at the route you want to follow. If you instead look at where you are afraid of the bike going, then in nine out of ten times you will end up there'.

Source: Advice from my Club Mountain Bike Instructor

(Walt: Probably applicable to other aspects of life).

I STAND UPON MY DESK

‘I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things from a different way. The world looks very different from up here. Just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in another way.’

Source: The character of John Keating in the film Dead Poet’s Society.

SCRUM IS A TOOL

'Scrum is a tool, not a solution.'

Source: Ken Schwaber

ABOUT QUOTOLOGIST BLOG

It's quite simple.
Someone says something.
I hear it or read it and it has an impact on me.
I then record it and share it.
Some people keep diaries. Others collect stamps. I collect quotes. Not necessarily by famous people and from fiction as well as fact.
I have done so for many, many years in note books...gathering dust.
Obviously these quotations wont have the same impact on others as they have had on me, at a certain time, place or while in a particular state of mind.