Selected efficiency quotes

1. It is astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it.

2. I'm suspicious of any mode of transportation that requires a running start.

3. LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.

4. Remember, America: organization will set you free.

5. If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way.

6. Better start rushing before the rush begins!

7. Our meetings are held to discuss many problems which would never arise if we held fewer meetings.

8. It's amazing how much research has gone into making some of the worst decisions.

9. One should be in harmony with, not in opposition to, the strength and force of the opposition. This means that one should do nothing that is not natural or spontaneous; the important thing is not to strain in any way.

10. The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.

11. To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.

12. The good thing about reinventing the wheel is that you can get a round one.

13. Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

14. The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half.

15. There is another ground of hope that must not be omitted. Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and means on matters and pursuits of far less use and value; whereof, if but a small part were directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that might not be overcome.

16. Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture.

17. My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty... it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

18. Government [is] operated by deeply embedded, hopelessly entangled bureaus where nothing is accomplished because the function of the bureau is to intercept every living idea and smother it.

19. Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.

20. Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.

21. Don't find fault, find a remedy.

22. It goes without saying that the desire to accomplish the task with more confidence, to avoid wasting time and labour, and to spare our experimental animals as much as possible, made us strictly observe all the precautions taken by surgeons in respect to their patients.

23. Perhaps, after all, there is something in the theory that only the ultra-busy can find time for everything.

24. A computer shall not waste your time or require you to do more work than is strictly necessary.

25. Government works less efficiently when it begins to grow out of control and takes on more and more of the responsibilities that belong to the citizens.

26. Many hands make light work.

27. Meetings are a great trap. Soon you find yourself trying to get agreement and then the people who disagree come to think they have a right to be persuaded. However, they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.

28. You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

29. Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.

30. Unix is like a toll road on which you have to stop every 50 feet to pay another nickel. But hey! You only feel 5 cents poorer each time.

31. Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.

32. Not that I have anything much against redundancy. But I said that already.

33. The computer should be doing the hard work. That's what it's paid to do, after all.

34. I'm afraid my gut level reaction is basically, proceed is cute, but cute doesn't cut it in the emergency room.

35. When's the last time you used duct tape on a duct?

36. Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.

37. You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.

38. The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him.

39. Architecture is the art of how to waste space.

40. Spare no expense to make everything as economical as possible.

41. If ye are seeking Rob Roy, he's ken'd to be better than half a hunder men strong when he's at the fewest.

42. The superfluous does not deserve to be enhanced.

43. The synthesis of my life was the act of gaining time.

44. There are immutable Islamic principles which order relations between people, but there is no Islamic economic, social or political structure which cannot be changed... Nothing which can make the world a better place can be rejected out of hand as non-Islamic; ... In order to be Islamic, a solution must fulfill two conditions: it must be maximally efficient and maximally humane. ibid., p. 31

45. Haste maketh waste.

46. Quantity is quality

47. #else /* !STDSTDIO */ /* The big, slow, and stupid way */

48. He knows how to form a group into the shape he wants it to have. He knows how to get people to work together. And he does it by the most minimal means possible

49. I'm Grant Foster for public television - Where a hundred people work so thirty can watch.

50. Think slow, act fast.

51. But what about speed?

52. Fast bind, fast find.

53. Be sincere, be brief, be seated.

54. It's pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.

55. Dispatch is the soul of business.

56. 'Too many of us dissipate our energy by being 'for all good causes,' attending meetings and passing resolutions, organizing and presenting petitions - all this effort to change others, when if we really got down to it we could use this energy to change ourselves: We become tired radicals because we use our weakest weapon: the ballot box, where we are always outnumbered, and refuse to use our strongest weapon: spiritual power.'

57. In the early days, I was writing scripts for virtually all the books, and it was very hard to keep all the artists busy; poor little frail me, doing story after story. So I'd be writing a story for Kirby, and Steve Ditko would walk in and say, 'Hey, I need some work now.' And I'd say, 'I can't give it to you now, Steve, I'm finishing Kirby's.' But we couldn't afford to keep Steve waiting, because time is money, so I'd have to say, 'Look Steve, I can't write a script for you now, but here's the plot for the next Spider-Man. Go home and draw anything you want, as long as it's something like this, and I'll put the copy in later.' So I was able to finish Jack's story. Steve in the meantime was drawing another story.....Okay, it started out as a lazy's man's device...but we realized this was absolutely the best way to do a comic.....Don't have the writer say, 'Panel one will be a long shot of Spider-Man walking down the street.' The artist may see it differently; maybe he feels it should be a shot of Spider-Man swinging on his web, or climbing upside-down on the ceiling or something.

58. Resolutions expressing Parliamentary approval of every Treaty before ratification would be a very cumbersome form of procedure and would burden the House with a lot of unnecessary business. The absence of disapproval may be accepted as sanction, and publicity and opportunity for discussion and criticism are the really material and valuable elements which henceforth will be introduced.

59. Tutti gli organi del partito funzionano: devono funzionare percio anche gli organi genitali.

60. In the tragic days of Mussolini, the trains in Italy ran on time as never before and I am told in their way, their horrible way, that the Nazi concentration-camp system in Germany was a model of horrible efficiency. The really basic thing in government is policy. Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy, but good administration can never save bad policy.

61. I don't think necessity is the mother of invention - invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.

62. Win with ability, not with numbers.

63. When the enemy is driven back, we have failed, and when he is cut off, encircled and dispersed, we have succeeded.

64. Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.

65. There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

66. If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.

67. Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

68. Programs today get very fat; the enhancements tend to slow the programs down because people put in special checks. When they want to add some feature, they'll just stick in these checks without thinking how they might slow the thing down.

69. Don't fight forces, use them.

70. All of humanity now has the option to 'make it' successfully and sustainably, by virtue of our having minds, discovering principles and being able to employ these principles to do more with less.

71. There are over 2 million cars standing in front of red lights with their engines going. Then we have over 2 million times approximately 100 horsepower being generated as they are idling there, so that we have something like 200 million horses jumping up and down and going nowhere. Now, we have to count that in our economy when we begin to get down to what is the efficiency of the economy.

72. 'A few months ago they [the Duffers] were all for washing up the plates and knives before dinner: they said it saved time afterwards. I've caught them planting boiled potatoes to save cooking them when they were dug up. One day the cat got into the dairy and twenty of them were at work moving all the milk out; no one thought of moving the cat.' (ch. 11)

73. The time is not far distant when I shall be able to say that one doctor, with, perhaps, ten assistants, can probably effect several hundred if not one thousand sterilizations in a single day.

74. He's just scary smart, sort of smarter than everyone else in the room. There's just a handful of these people who know absolutely everything about the process. They could do everyone's job brilliantly. Every aspect is under their control.

75. What's the point of being efficient if you're only leading an efficiently blank life?

76. The slope takes you to the windmill, but effort takes you nowhere.

77. Ceux qui s'appliquent trop aux petites choses deviennent ordinairement incapables des grandes.

78. Those who were adept and brave fellows I have made military commanders. Those who were quick and nimble I have made herders of horses. Those who were not adept I have given a small whip and sent to be shepherds.

79. Please don't ask me to do that which I've just said I'm not going to do, because you're burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

80. There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wound, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.

81. A very great memory often forgotteth how much time is lost by repeating things of no use.

82. The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn. Perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of a duck unserved.

83. The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.

84. I tell you, sir, the only safeguard of order and discipline in the modern world is a standardized worker with interchangeable parts. That would solve the entire problem of management.

85. I think we can reduce the size of Washington. Get rid of the Energy Department. Get rid of the Agriculture Department, or at least render it three-quarters the size it is today; there are more agriculture bureaucrats than there are farmers in this country.

86. Leninism is a combination of two things which Europeans have kept for some centuries in different compartments of the soul - religion and business. We are shocked because the religion is new, and contemptuous because the business, being subordinated to the religion instead of the other way round, is highly inefficient.

87. Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry.

88. 'The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.' (p. 162)

89. Fifteen cents of every twenty-cent stamp goes for storage.

90. I have accomplished more toward solving the Armenian problem in three months than Abdul Hamid accomplished in thirty years!

91. A constitution should be framed so as not to impede the action of government, nor force the government to its violation.

92. If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

93. We walk faster when we walk alone.

94. You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? Excuse me, I have no time to listen to such nonsense.

95. Punctuality is the thief of time.

96. Modern man no longer works at what cannot be abbreviated.

97. To do two things at once is to do neither.

98. A committee is the only known form of life with a hundred bellies and no brain.

99. Progress doesn't come from early risers - progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.

100. Time is never a problem on the God level. Or space. Whatever needed to deceive you was provided. But no more than that. That is the conservative principle in art at the God level. While I can't do it, not being at that level, I have seen a lot of it done. A skillful Artist in shapes and appearances does no more than necessary to create His effect.