Summer Sayings: Teasing Wisdom from A Sentence

Print out, fold in half, insert in your beach novel.  Reflect, contemplate and bring back to your office to discuss, debate, and become wiser about making things work.

By Michael D. Maginn

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e’ve collected provocative quotations for a long time.  We’ve found that thinking about them by yourself can help unlock some doors, change perspectives, and even stimulate new directions, especially if you happen upon one that sheds light on a problem.  In a group, discussing the meaning and implications of sayings and quotations can be a refreshing chance to get new ideas on the table.  For example, present a quotation to your group, discuss what it means, ask for examples and then ask, “Is there a lesson here we can use in our work?”  The results might surprise you.  

Quotations are like nano-cases, each one taking thoughts and discussion in a different direction.  This collection contains a potpourri from The Classics to Seinfeld.  Surely one of these might strike a chord and be worth bringing back to your desk. 

1.  “Everyone has a strategy until I hit them.”  Mike Tyson, heavyweight world champion 

2. “He is foolish to blame the sea who is shipwrecked twice.” Publilius Syrus, circa 40 BC.

3. “The show doesn’t go on because it is ready.  It goes on because it is eleven-thirty.” Michael Lorme, Saturday Night Live 

4. “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”  Albert Einstein 

5. “Everything is mind-made.” Ayya Khema

6. “Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”  Winston Churchill 

7. “Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.” Jerry Seinfeld 

8.  “People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.” Carl W. Buechner, minister

9. "If you want to make enemies, try to change something."  Woodrow Wilson 

10. “What is in greatest demand today isn’t analysis but synthesis, recognizing patterns, crossing boundaries to uncover hidden perceptions and making bold leaps of imagination.”  Daniel H. Pink 

11. “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”  Sun Tzu

12. "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Carl Sagan

13. “One cannot step twice into the same river.” Heraclitus 

14.  “Never judge a day by the weather.” Kimo’s Hawaiian Rules 

15. “Incumbents very seldom invent the future.”  Eric Schmidt, CEO Google.

16. “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Albert Einstein

17. “If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.”  Buddhist proverb 

18. "I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure — which is: Try to please everybody." Herbert Bayard Swope, journalist 

19. “I buy when other people are selling.” J. Paul Getty

20. “You can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence.”  Carl G. Jung 

21. “I was always for change until it happened to me.”  Mid-level financial services manager

22. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Fredrick Douglass  

23. “Non-obvious solutions require imagination.” Edward deBono 

24. “Everyone hears only what he understands.” Goethe

25. “If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would say ‘Faster Horses’.” Henry Ford

26. “Make clients an integral part of every project team.” Tom Peters 

27. “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.” Colin Powell

28. “You can never plan the future by the past.” Edmund Burke 

29. “We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle. 

30. “All things be ready if our minds be so.” William Shakespeare

31. “If we do not try, we will not know.” Ayya Khema 

32. “When you look annoyed all the time, people think that you're busy." George Costanza, Seinfeld

33. “If you do everything right, you are doomed.” Clayton Christensen, on Disruptive Innovation 

34. “It’s easy to get good players.  Getting them to play together, that’s the hard part.” Casey Stengel 

35. “Successful institutions almost always develop strong cultures that [become] an enormous impediment to the institution’s ability to adapt.”  Lou Gerstner, former IBM CEO 

36. “In thinking of how to solve a problem, your first idea is usually someone else’s.”  Anonymous 

37. “You never gain something but that you lose something.” Henry D. Thoreau 

38. “Innovation is a function of management.” Gary Hamel 

39. “Adversity is what introduces you to yourself.” John F. McDonnell 

40. “And no, we don't know where it will lead. We just know there's something much bigger than any of us here.” Steve Jobs 

41. “How can you think and hit at the same time?” Yogi Berra

   42.  “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” William Shakespeare.

43. “It is what you learn after you know it all that counts.” John Wooden

44. “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Henry D. Thoreau 

45.  “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”  Sam Walton

46. “Branding is so bloody obvious.  When one has an ‘identity’, life gets a lot simpler.” Tom Peters 

47. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” Anthony Robbins

48. “To live for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.”  Robert M. Pirsig
    
    
49. “Be nice to nerds.  Chances are, you’ll be working for one.”  Bill Gates

50. “Don’t bleed before you’re shot.” Irish Proverb