“Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must either then obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.”

—  Lois McMaster Bujold , Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)
Context: No, no, never send interim reports. Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must either then obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must either then obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, whic…" by Lois McMaster Bujold?
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Lois McMaster Bujold 383
Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA 1949

Related quotes

Jane Roberts photo

“An illness is a failure to solve a mental or psychological problem in the correct manner... The energy that would be used to solve the problem instead is spent maintaining the illness. It is therefore necessary that an attempt be made as soon as possible to solve the problem, which of course must first be discovered by the ego, which has avoided it.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 159, Page 68
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 4

“The problem of thermonuclear reactions is not a usual physics problem. This is a problem that must transform society and the world. Our generation, which gave to mankind atomic energy and thermonuclear energy in the form of explosions, is responsible to humanity for solving the main problem of energy – obtaining energy from water. People are waiting for the solution of this problem. Our duty is to solve it within the lifetime of our generation, and therefore we must set out on this path.”

Gersh Budker (1918–1977) Soviet physicist

as quoted by D. D. Ryutov in [G.I. Budker: reflections & remembrances, by Boris N. Breizman, Springer, 1993, http://books.google.com/books?id=e0bxFrmNtykC&printsec=frontcover#PRA1-PA278,M1, 1-56396-070-2, 278]

“We must put our energies into solving the difficult problems, in many disciplines, which are involved in renewable sources - on which both the developed and the developing countries must eventually depend.”

Martin Ryle (1918–1984) English radio astronomer

p 500 of Electronics and Power (1982) Vol 28 Issue 7/8.

Steven Weinberg photo

“As you will never be sure which are the right problems to work on, most of the time that you spend in the laboratory or at your desk will be wasted. If you want to be creative, then you will have to get used to spending most of your time not being creative, to being becalmed on the ocean of scientific knowledge.”

Steven Weinberg Scientist: Four golden lessons

Scientist: Four golden lessons (2003)

Albert Einstein photo

“You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant: We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them

K. Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera photo

“Intellectuals tend to spend too much of their valuable time in study, critical analysis and debate. They usually have little or no time for practice.”

K. Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera (1919–2006) Sri Lankan Buddhist monk

"Is Buddhism a Theory of a Philosophy?"
What Buddhists Believe (1993)

Mark Kac photo

“I then reached for a time honored tactic used by mathematicians: if you can't solve the real problem, change it into one you can solve.”

Mark Kac (1914–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Source: Enigmas Of Chance (1985), Chapter 6, Cornell II, p. 122.

Ravi Gomatam photo

“Any high school boy or girl knows how to calculate the force with which a stone he or she throws will hit someone in the face, but nothing in those equations they use will tell them whether or not to throw it…To solve the problem of values we must know what is valuable. Consciousness is the most valuable commodity…To bring values into science, we need to connect science with what is valuable—consciousness.”

Ravi Gomatam (1950) Indian academic

An interview with Ravi Gomatam by Thomas Beardy for Clarion Call magazine (Clarion University's newspaper) There Consciousness Within Science?" http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/consciousness-in-science.html#Consciousness-Science"Is, 1990.

Diogenes Laërtius photo

“It was a favourite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Theophrastus, 10.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 5: The Peripatetics

Related topics