Useful Quotes

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation…..We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence then is not and act, but a habit” Aristotle 384-322BC

“It’s not the strongest or the fittest that survive but the most adaptable”.
 Charles Darwin

“A fool only learns from his own mistakes, an expert learns from others”.  
 Otto Von Bismark

“When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully”.
Dr Johnson

“If you see a bandwagon, it’s too late”.
Sir James Goldsmith

“What I hear, I forget; What I see, I remember; What I do, I understand”.    
Confucius

“We trained very hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganised.  I was to learn later in lie that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising.  A wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation”.
Gaius Petronius     Roman author 70 AD

“So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work”.
Peter Drucker

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80.  Anyone who keeps learning stays young.  The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young”.
Henry Ford

“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few engage in it”
Henry Ford

“When two cultures collide is the only time when true suffering exists”.
Hermann Hesse

“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that is your own self”
Aldous Huxley

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them”.
Albert Einstein

“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it”
Albert Einstein

“Plans are nothing, planning is everything”
Dwight D Eisnehower

“The art of prophecy is very difficult, especially with respect to the future”    
Mark Twain

“Continuous Improvement is better than delayed perfection”
Mark Twain

“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do and how to do it”
Abraham Lincoln

“That which is honoured is produced”
Plato

“What gets measured gets done; what gets rewarded gets done repeatedly”
Barrry C Fox St Loius Univesity

“When the best leaders' work is done, the people say - “We did it ourselves” ”.
Lao Tze     500 BC

“I must hurry to catch up with my followers”.    
Gandhi

“Leaders are not born they are made, and they are made by effort and hard work”.
Vince Lombardi

“The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the ocean was not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge”.
Daniel Borstin

“To learn significant things we must suspend some basic notions about our worlds and ourselves”.
Peter Senge

“The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, and is not preceded by a period of worry and depression”.
John Preston, Boston College

“We must plan for the future, because people who stay in the present will remain in the past”.
Abraham Lincoln

“The smartest strategy in war is the one which allows you to achieve your objective without having to fight”.
Sun Tzu  500BC

"When your strategy is deep and far reaching then what you gain by your calculations is much, so you can win before you even fight.  When your strategic thinking is shallow and near sighted, then what you gain by your calculations is little so you lose before you do battle”.
Sun Tzu  500BC

“All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out off which great victory is evolved”.
Sun Tzu  500BC

“The success of Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha has been jolly good for us.  People start out by buying one of the low priced Japanese jobs.  They get to enjoy the fun and exhilaration of  the open road and they frequently end up buying one of our more powerful and expensive machines”.
Eric Turner, Chrmn BSA ltd 1965

“The best strategy is one which can actually be carried out”.
 Sir John Harvey Jones

“The ideal organisation, and the one with the best chance of success, is one where if you ask anyone, from the chairman down to the newest recruit on the shop floor, what is the busines trying to do, you would get the same answer”.
Sir John Harvey Jones

“Many people dream of success.  To me success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection.  In fact success represents 1% of your work which results from the 99% that is so called failure”.
Soichiro Honda

“Good words are worth much, and cost little”.
Jacula Prudentum

“Words are the clothes that thoughts wear, only the clothes”.  
Samuel Butler

“Man’s mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions”.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves”.
 Abraham Lincoln

“Well done is better than well said”.
Benjamin Franklin

“Don’t find fault, find a remedy”.
Henry Ford

“Whether you think you can or whether you think you cannot, you are probably right”.
Henry Ford

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others.  It is the only thing”.
Albert Schweitzer

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm”.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You see things; and you say “why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”
George Bernard Shaw

“All the significant battles are waged within the self”.
Sheldon Kopp

“Catch someone doing something right”.
Ken Blanchard Spencer Johnson

“No one can whistle a symphony.  It takes an orchestra to play it.”
Halford E. Luccock

“Snowflakes are one of nature’s most fragile things, but just look what they can do when they stick together”.
Vesta M. Kelly

“Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently”.
Proverb

“The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything”.
Bishop W C Magee

“When one door closes, another opens, but we often look so long and regretfully upon the closed door, we do not see the ones which open for us”.
Alexander Graham Bell

“From a worldly point of view there is no mistake so great as that of always being right”.
Samuel Butler

“An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail”.
Edwin Rand

“People are only full people when they are at play”.
Schiller

“The biggest problem that almost any company in the western world faces is not its competitors, nor the Japanese.  The biggest problems are self inflicted, created right at home by management that is off course in the competitive world of today”.
Demming

“The only survivors at the end of two decades will be the companies with constancy of purpose for quality, productivity and service”.
Demming

“People who are only good with hammers see every problem as a nail”.
Abraham Maslow

“The man who have no imagination stands on the earth.  He have no wings.  He cannot fly”.
Muhammad Ali

“Nothing endures but change”.
Heraclitus

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can.....begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it”.
Goethe

“Life asks of every individual a contribution and it is up to that individual to discover what it should be”.
Viktor Frankl

“Thou shalt decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee”.
Job 22.28

“Imagination is more important than knowledge”.
Einstein

“Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness”.
Samual Johnson

“Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters”.
Nathaniel Emmons

“A funny thing about life.  If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you often get it!”
W Somerset Maugham

“All I had to do was focus”.
Linford Christie

“Reason can answer questions, but imagination has to ask them”.
Ralph Gerard

“Constant questioning is the first key to wisdom”.
Abelard

“A man grows tired by standing still”.
Chinese proverb

“The impossible is often the untried”.
Jim Goodwin

“Our dream for the 1990’s is a boundary less company where we knock down the walls that separate us from each other on the inside and from our key constituents on the outside”.
Jack Welch

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world.  The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man”.
George Bernard Shaw

“Play so that you may be serious”.
Anarcharsis,  600BC

“It isn’t that they can’t see the solution.  It is that they can’t see the problem”
GK Chesterton

“Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes”.
Voltaire

“Knowledge is free at the library.  Just bring your own container”.
Anonymous

“An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; a pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity”.
Anonymous

“No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time steady eye.”
Winston Churchill

“Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten”
Gucci family slogan

“The customer is always right”.
Harry Gordon Selfridge

“If you mean to profit learn to please”.
CharlesChurchill (1731-64)

“Good things only happen when planned; bad things happen on their own”
Phillip Crosby

“Problems are only opportunities in work clothes”
Henry Kaiser

“A leader is a dealer in hope”
Napolen Bonaparte

“Not everything that counts can be counted; not everything that can be counted counts”
Albert Einstein

“They watch your feet, not your lips”
Tom Peters

“Simplicity is genius”
Ron Greenwood

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths”
Walt Disney

“There is no limit to the propulsive effect to the pat on the back!”
Anonymous.

“Change your thoughts and you change your world”
Norman V Peale

“A lighted candle loses nothing of its own brilliance by lighting other candles”
Chinese Proverbs

“We want Leaders, not cheer-leaders!”
Dr Joseph Juran

“If you don’t think about the future, you cannot have one”
John Galsworthy

“Whosever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times”
Niccolo Machiaveli 

“It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.”
Gertrude Stein

“The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes”.
Marcel Proust

“A great part of the machines made use of in those manufacturers in which labour is most subdivided, were originally the inventions of common working men, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation, naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier methods of performing it”
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

“If you are any good at all, you know you can get better”
Lindsay Buckingham Fleetwood Mac

“none but a fool worries about things he cannot influence”
Samuel Johnson

“I always prefer to believe the best of everybody- it saves so much time”
Rudyard Kipling

“The man who speaks the truth is always at ease”
Persian Proverb

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”
Eleanor Roosevelt

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless”
Mother Theresa

“If you think you can, you can. and if you think you can’t, you’re right”
Mary Kay Ash

“Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.”
D.H Lawrence

“Courage is very important.  like a muscle, it is strengthened by use”
Ruth Gordon

“It’s a funny thing about life:if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it”
W.Somerset Maugham

“Champions keep playing until they get it right”
Billie Jean King

“The word impossible is not in my dictionary”
Napolean Bonaparte

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it”
Margaret Thatcher

“To listen is an effort, just to hear has no merit”
Sravinsky

“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator”
Francis Bacon