323 Planning Quotes

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

Reason well from the beginning and then there will never be any need to look back with confusion and doubt.

The thing has already taken form in my mind before I start it. The first attempts are absolutely unbearable. I say this because I want you to know that if you see something worthwhile in what I am doing, it is not by accident but because of real direction and purpose.

Taken altogether, Washington as a city is most unsatisfactory, and falls more grievously short of the thing attempted than any other of the great undertakings of which I have seen anything in the United States.

Socialism, on the contrary, extends its function to the description of society as it should be, and the discovery of the means of making it what it should be.

I think that's what I love about my life. There's no maniacal master plan. It's just unfolding before me.

It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work.

I'm a terrible long-term planner.

Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.

You can never plan the future by the past.

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

Hold the period of youth sacred to education, and the period of maturity, when the physical forces begin to flag, equally sacred to ease and agreeable relaxation.

The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.

We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.

Raeder, the political admiral, stealthily built up the German Navy in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, and then put it to use in a series of aggressions which he had taken a leading part in planning.

The art of concentrating strength at one point, forcing a breakthrough, rolling up and securing the flanks on either side, and then penetrating like lightning deep into his rear, before the enemy has time to react.

Don't order one for the road, because the road is already laid out.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

In one point the plan was fatally defective, since it involved the deadly enmity of a race whose character and whose power were as yet but ill understood,--the fiercest, boldest, most politic, and most ambitious savages to whom the American forest has ever given birth.

New York: Prison towers and modern posters for soap and whiskey. Pittsburgh: Abandon it.

To look at the cross-section of any plan of a big city is to look at something like the section of a fibrous tumor.

Time enough to think of the future when you haven't any future to think of.

The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations.

The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios... The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.

Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season passes away unimproved.

The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led.

We have some control over when we retire. However, we have very little control over how long we will live.

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

First gain the victory and then make the best use of it you can.

Change before you have to.

Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life.

For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme, Nor take her tea without a strategem.

'If it's planned, it's boring'

The effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go; with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.

The problems raised by a conscious direction of economic affairs on a national scale inevitably assume even greater dimensions when the same is attempted internationally. The conflict between planning and freedom cannot but become more serious as the similarity of standards and values among those submitted to a unitary plan diminishes.

The more the state 'plans' the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.

This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals.

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.

Many of the greatest things man has achieved are not the result of consciously directed thought, and still less the product of a deliberately coordinated effort of many individuals, but of a process in which the individual plays a part which he can never fully understand.

There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would possess.

The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.

Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.

As enunciated today, 'progress' is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.

If you know what a man's doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he's doing keep behind him.

I've always been more interested in the future than in the past.

'Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to. '

The future starts today, not tomorrow.

A prince or general can best demonstrate his genius by managing a campaign exactly to suit his objectives and his resources, doing neither too much nor too little.

Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war.

'There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.'

'If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of ten it will.'

You are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it!

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it ... Success is shy - it won't come out while you're watching.

Most men of business think 'Anyhow this system will probably last my time. It has gone on a long time, and is likely to go on still.'

I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.

Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.

Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement.

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence. Remember that our sons and our grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.

Hours of research can cut months of field work. (Full quote: 'In today's world, time is the most expensive part of an expedition. Man hours spent in the archives can cut hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of time from the field phase of most projects.')

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled - but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observation of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is, to use it as sparingly as possible; avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear.

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst of architects from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.

History is merely a list of surprises. ... It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.

We've fallen way behind. Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.

I want to hang a map of the world in my house then I'm gonna put pins into all the locations that I've travelled to. But first I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down.

Never make forecasts, especially about the future.

Here in Florida ... we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland - the blessing of size. There's enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.

In this volatile business of ours, we can ill afford to rest on our laurels, even to pause in retrospect. Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.

Think beyond your lifetime, if you want to do something truly great. Make a fifty-year master plan. A fifty-year master plan will change how you look at the opportunities in the present.

When we consider a project, we really study it - not just the surface idea, but everything about it. And when we go into that new project, we believe in it all the way. We have confidence in our ability to do it right. And we work hard to do the best possible job.

Variant: The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

To-morrow is, ah, whose?

Never get married in college; it's hard to get a start if a prospective employer finds you've already made one mistake.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

...in the whole range of human activities, war most closely resembles a game of cards.

Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential

A man's mind will very generally refuse to make itself up until it be driven and compelled by emergency.

A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end. (1450b26)

Tactics flow from a positionally superior game.

Something must be left to chance; nothing is sure in a sea fight above all.

Set the cart before the horse.

The assault on Malta will cost us many casualties: But I am the one who wants it because I consider it absolutely essential for the future development of the war. If we take Malta, Libya will be safe. If not, the situation of the colony will always be precarious.

Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month.

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.

It has been often stated that a social order is likely to be stable so long as it gives scope to talent. Actually, it is the ability to give scope to the untalented that is most vital in maintaining social stability. For not only are the untalented more numerous but, since they cannot transmute their grievances into a creative effort, their disaffection will be more pronounced and explosive. Thus the most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them. For there is a tendency in the untalented to divert their energies from their own development into the management, manipulation, and probably frustration of others. They want to police, instruct, guide, and meddle. In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them. This requires, first, an abundance of opportunities for purposeful action and self advancement. Secondly, a wide diffusion of technical and social skills so that people will be able to work and manage their affairs with a minimum of tutelage. The scribe mentality is best neutralized by canalizing energies into purposeful and useful pursuits, and by raising the cultural level of the whole population so as to blur the dividing line between the educated and the uneducated. If such an arrangement lacks provisions for the encouragement of the talented it yet has the merit of not interfering with them.

Many is the mirage I chased. Always I was overreaching myself. The oftener I touched reality, the harder I bounced back to the world of illusion, which is the name for everyday life. 'Experience! More experience!' I clamored. In a frantic effort to arrive at some kind of order, some tentative working program, I would sit down quietly now and then and spend long, long hours mapping out a plan of procedure. Plans, such as architects and engineers sweat over, were never my forte. But I could always visualize my dreams in a cosmogonic pattern. Though I could never formulate a plot I could balance and weigh opposing forces, characters, situations, events, distribute them in a sort of heavenly lay-out, always with plenty of space between, always with the certitude that there is no end, only worlds within worlds ad infinitum, and that wherever one left off one had created a world, a world finite, total, complete.

It is the downfall of evil, that it never sees far enough ahead. -Stone Tables