Source: The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People (1989), p. 101
Business and work quotes
Related topics
Dwight D. Eisenhower
(1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)
Peter F. Drucker
(1909–2005) American business consultant
Variant: There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
“If you think your boss is stupid, remember: you wouldn't have a job if he was any smarter. ”
John Gotti
(1940–2002) American crime boss
“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.”
Michael Jordan
(1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman
Variant: Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, and others make it happen.
“UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not.”
Source: The Lorax (1972)
“I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.”
Lily Tomlin
(1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer
“None of it is important or all of it is.”
Introduction
The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)
Context: "... Let us go," we said, "into the Sea of Cortez, realizing that we become forever a part of it; that our rubber boots slogging through a flat of eel-grass, that the rocks we turn over in a tide pool, make us truly and permanently a factor in the ecology of the region. We shall take something away from it, but we shall leave something too." And if we seem a small factor in a huge pattern, nevertheless it is of relative importance. We take a tiny colony of soft corals from a rock in a little water world. And that isn't terribly important to the tide pool. Fifty miles away the Japanese shrimp boats are dredging with overlapping scoops, bringing up tons of shrimps, rapidly destroying the species so that it may never come back, and with the species destroying the ecological balance of the whole region. That isn't very important in the world. And thousands of miles away the great bombs are falling and the stars are not moved thereby. None of it is important or all of it is.
“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.”
Henry Ford
(1863–1947) American industrialist
Variant: Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
“no expectations, no disappointments!”
Eric Jerome Dickey
(1961) American author
Sleeping with Strangers
“I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?”
Benjamin Disraeli
(1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
“And the whole [is] greater than the part.”
Καὶ τὸ ὅλον τοῦ μέρους μεῖζον
ἐστιν
Elements, Book I, Common Notion 8 (5 in certain editions)
Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Η 1045a 8–10: "… the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts … [πάντων γὰρ ὅσα πλείω μέρη ἔχει καὶ μὴ ἔστιν οἷον σωρὸς τὸ πᾶν]"
Euclid’s Elements
“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
Samuel Goldwyn
(1879–1974) American film producer (1879-1974).
Misattributed
“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”
Phil Jackson
(1945) basketball player and coach from the United States
“As long as there's life, there's hope.”
Tamora Pierce
(1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children
“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
Joseph Campbell
(1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer
Variant: You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.
Jane Goodall
(1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist
Reported in Patti Denys, Mary Holmes, Animal Magnetism: At Home With Celebrities & Their Animal Companions (1998), p. 106
Source: Jane Goodall: 40 Years at Gombe
“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.”
Babe Ruth
(1895–1948) American baseball player
As quoted in Weird Ideas That Work : 11 1/2 practices for promoting, managing, and sustaining innovation (2001) by Robert I. Sutton, p. 95