Quotes\Thoughts October 2010

I collect quotes and thoughts over the years that reflect things I have observed; here are a bunch of my favorites. 

Intra-Preneurial

Mistakes of ambition vs. mistakes of sloth.

Luck is the residue of design – Milton

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.   - Abraham Lincoln

Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.   - Philip K. Dick

Coherence – “the quality of being logically integrated”

“Black Swan Event” – rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability. Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.  - Sir Winston Churchill

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.  - Nikola Tesla

"I know how to display the tactics of moderation, but without conceding anything on the goal." -Yitzhak Shamir

The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.   - William Gibson

If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.
  - Pierre Gallois

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.  - Donald H. Rumsfeld

I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.    - E. V. Lucas

It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense. 

Pushing water uphill. 

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.   - A. H. Weiler

Statistics, like television, show you what is interesting but not what is important.

I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.   - Ray Bradbury

“a short pencil is better than a long memory.”

The squeaking wheel doesn't always get the grease. Sometimes it gets replaced.   - Vic Gold

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm..
 
The inner rot of all empires is very, very slow and quite insidious.  Usually, the military ceases being a citizen’s obligation and becomes a mercenary operation that is increasingly expensive and increasingly useless for defense, good only for looting distant provinces or neighbors while the core of the empire rots away.  The tipping point isn’t military spending overhead.  The tipping point is up at the top: do the elites see the empire as a road to personal wealth? When they decide this, they go on an internal looting expedition, cutting their own taxes while increasing taxes on the lower classes.  Rome did this, Spain did this and the UK did this. All empires do this. - Niall Ferguson

 

“ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” - Charles Darwin (1871)

The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.  - Willem de Kooning

No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather.  - Michael Pritchard

Those that don’t save 10% of their income, end up working for those that do”.

"You pay in advance for capacity."

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.  - Peter Drucker

“It is not fit that you should sit here any longer”  - Oliver Cromwell

“My God – the thing works!”

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.  - Ben Hecht

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.  - Bill Cosby

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. – Winston Churchill

The fact that networks of highly mobile amateurs can confound- even defeat – a professional army is the only thing that has prevented empires from completely determining the course of history. Whether that is a good thing or not depends on what amateurs you’re talking about or what empires but it does mean that you can’t predict the outcome of war simply by looking at the numbers – Sebastian Junger

It's a VUCA world," he says - volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.

Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.  - David T. Wolf

Act on what we have …..Until we get better information.

When I was young and naïve, I believed that important people took positions based on careful consideration of the options. Now I know better. Much of what Serious People believe rests on prejudices, not analysis. And these prejudices are subject to fads and fashions. - Paul Krugman

“China’s aversion to multilateral diplomacy, like any bully, it prefers to pick off its antagonists one by one” – Economist Magazine

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.” — Marcus Tullius

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

The first athletic "cup" was used in hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was worn in 1974. So you're saying it took 100 years for men to realize their brain is also important?

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.  - Napoleon Bonaparte

Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.  - Emo Phillips

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised. George Will

Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going. Christopher Darlington Morley (1890-1957)

The man who never makes a mistake always takes orders from one who does

Be entirely tolerant or not at all; follow the good path or the evil one. To stand at the crossroads requires more strength than you possess.  - Heinrich Heine

 If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. W. Edwards Deming

“I find that if you stay too long you start to accept many of the things you once thought strange. You lose your objectivity, like doing an autopsy on your own children.” – Robert Young Pelton

The “Administrative Burden” is a team member whom takes so much time away from the running of the business due to their history of personal administration as to be a detriment to the organization rather than an asset.  This does not take into account the opportunity cost or having someone else in the position just the net high administrative overhead the team member has a history of requiring. 

His career depends on compliance with company messaging. – Garth Turner

You don’t shit where you eat. –anonymous. 

So, let’s remember. There are those among us who, in serving themselves, serve no one. - Garth Turner

There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.  - Gore Vidal

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork. - Edward Abbey

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.  - Albert Camus

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others. - Edward Abbey

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

A memorandum isn't written to inform the receiver, but to protect the writer. Dean Acheson

You must believe in free will; there is no choice. Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991)

 

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read. Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

The nice thing about standards is, there are so many to choose from.

In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.  -Franz Kafka

“It may work but I do not have the cycles to make it work for you” – Corey Easton

You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light. Vicomte de Chateaubriand
French author & politician (1768 - 1848)

1960 Dad worked, Mom stayed home, 5 Kids, no debt
1970 Dad worked, Mom worked part time, 4 Kids, no debt
1980 Dad worked, Mom worked full time , 3 Kids, a little debt
1990 Dad worked, Mom worked full time , 2 Kids, more debt
2000 Dad works 2 jobs, Mom worked full time , 1 Kid, tons of debt
2010 Dad works 2 jobs, Mom works 2 jobs, No Kids, absolutely broke and in debt.
Today why is it that with our great educational system, and with all the kids with degrees why can’t they see they have been shafted? - Dyslexic Smoking Man

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.  - Abraham Lincoln

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.  - Oscar Wilde

Because I gather you are now using it in essence to say that if we are  doing xyz in that case, why not in every other case?  This is exactly how willingness to help unfortunately can get translated into ownership. Justin Ramdin

The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.   - Walter Bagehot

OODA (observe, orient, decide, act)

Socialize losses, privatize gains. 

Pounding  Sand and Shoveling Smoke. 

Being sent in as a “Spear Catcher”

“whatever your cause, it's a lost cause without population control".

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.  - Putt's Law

“The greatest risk to a good plan is the dream of the perfect plan.”Carl von Clausewitz

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.  - Russell Baker

How did you go bankrupt? “Slowly at first, and then all at once.” -Ernest Hemingway

The easiest way for you to learn about money is for you not to have any.  - Katharine Whitehorn

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.  - H. P. Lovecraft

In democracy it's your vote that counts; In feudalism it's your count that votes.  - Mogens Jallberg

“There is a tendency to confuse good manners and good tailoring with integrity and intelligence.  J.K. Galbraith”

“One of the first things people sacrifice when they get overwhelmingly busy is their intellectual curiosity and inventiveness. When you’re stressed, you stop learning, and just start relying on the things you already know — the old chestnuts that have worked in the past and will, presumably, continue to work.”

“I could be further up the ladder, but I won’t play their corporate games. Men’s Room, Women’s Room — too many rules.”

The “desire to hold money as a store of wealth is a barometer of the degree of our distrust of our own calculations and conventions concerning the future. . . . The possession of actual money lulls our disquietude; and the premium we require to make us part with money is a measure of the degree of our disquietude.” John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

“It should be acknowledged that an informed but incorrectly made decision is better than no decision.   Typically decisions can be made on the Colin Powell 40/70 rule (once you have 40-70% of the information) make the decision.  Typically the collection of information greater than 40%-70% takes a considerable more amount of effort, takes longer, and therefore slows the deployment of short project.  By the time 100% of all relevant information is collected the decision is typically moot as work needs to move forward.  It should be noted that a slow decision or no decision, is actually a decision to do nothing.”Mike Rinkle

An apatheist is also someone who is not interested in accepting or denying any claims that gods exist or do not exist. In other words, an apatheist is someone who considers the question of the existence of gods as neither meaningful nor relevant to his or her life; nor to human affairs.

“It is difficult to get a man (or a woman) to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair

Incrementalism is pretty powerful: it takes your anger and metes it out in measurements too small to have an (effect)."

"It is the humble petition of the camel, who only asks that he may put his nose into the traveler's tent. It is so pitiful, so modest, that we must needs relent and grant it." 

“Once a camel has managed to place its nose within a tent, the rest of the camel will inevitably follow.”

“It queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there had never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some confounded fact we men have been living contentedly with ever since the day of creation would start up and knock the whole thing over.” – Joseph Conrad

“The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.”  – Joseph Conrad

“It is impossible to convey the life sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence – that which makes its truth, its meaning – its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream – alone.” – Joseph Conrad

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.
  - John le Carre

“I don’t like work – no man does –but I like what is in the work, - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself, not for others – what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.” – Joseph Conrad

“No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze.” – Joseph Conrad

The German Leaders held goals that were manifestly beyond the reach of their nation. Intermixed with an exceedingly high level of competence on the tactical and operational levels was a general inability to see the relationship between ends and means. The Germans waged the struggles with operational and tactical competence to the bitter end, but the tenacity of that defense only ensured that the final defeat would be all the more terrible.  John Keegan  

“we're in a position where we're important players - people will listen to us - but not so important that they're worried we have an alternative agenda”  - Stephen Harper  

What do you mean; I don’t support your system?  I go to court when I have to.

“North Americans have to give up factory labour type jobs and get into the high paying, intellectual fields where we use our brain power to stay ahead of the rest of the world.” -   Well, I've got some news for you - one heck of a lot of our citizens could not survive in this type of world.  Many, many people are hard working but totally incapable of doing much more than the factory type labour  that has given then a pretty good life style up to this point.  Farming this type of work out to chindia is depriving a large sector of our society of the ability to function in our brave new world.

WOULD YOU TELL ME, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where—" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"—so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat,
 "if you only walk long enough."
Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

 “Without a resource allocation model, large systems can fall prey to undue politicking for resources. “ Brendan Croskrey

“A fundamental assumption of the work of this council is that the concept of equity must be differentiated from the concept of equality.  In short, a classic principle of Western philosophy is that in order to treat all people with equity, you may have to treat some unequally. Equitable treatment therefore contemplates some standardization of resource allocations along with some differentiation of allocations for worthy purposes.” Brendan Croskrey

The Cult of Done Manifesto
1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6.The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

Design – Build – Forget – Crater – Repeat     OR     Design – Build – Maintain

This Blog

This Blog is not about Cats; I do like Cats and here is a Pic of my Blog's Name sake.

The Blog is a test to see if it can help me organize organize thoughts, items and interest in a single place on the Web. Not yet sure if a Blog will be the correct tool however I want to organize stuff where I can get at it from anywhere, work, home , on the road etc.
- My experience and interests vary from Hiking in Western Canada  to personal investing.
-I often find great stuff on the Internet and then forget where it was.
-My attitudes and opinions change over time and perhaps a Blog can catch that.
- Looking for a place I can put stuff where I can redirect others who may be interested in that stuff.


My Rules for the Blog:
- No Blogging while drinking (I am partial to wine and beer)
- This has nothing to with my work; (Never poop where you eat), however work is tied up in lifestyle, finance and society; those are topics I find worthy of examination.
- This stuff is for me and my perspective is unique; I am not a particularly good speller and I explore ideas. If you are politically correct "cause person", a grammar and spelling Nazi or do not like things then make constructive comments or just go away.
- I post links items etc I find intriguing. I am not a copyright lawyer; I figure if I make no money off something I am not going to concern myself too much with copyright. If I link an article or post an item and it is yours let me know and I will remove it. 


My sister-in law put up a blog a few weeks ago and I thought what the hell...if she can do it..... :)

Tyler Durden is the character from Fight Club, I think the only named character, I rather liked the movie.