“Good is the enemy of great. That good is the enemy of great is not just a business problem. It is a human problem”
As cited in: Margaret A. Byrnes, Jeanne Baxter (2006), The Principal's Leadership Counts!. p. 99
Good To Great And The Social Sectors, 2005
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James C. Collins 22
American business consultant and writer 1958Related quotes
“All things – great, small, good, bad, friend, enemy—should be a lesson, not an obsession.”
Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978
“This was a great reward for us. We had not had the good fortune to meet the enemy in force.”
Quoted in "The Civilizing Mission: A History of the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935-1936" - Page 172 - by A. J. Barker - 1968
“Karl Marx; the great enemy of human freedom.”
As quoted in "What Would Lincoln Think?" http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=knpGZGYLrRM#What_Would_Lincoln_Think__Harry_Jaffa_on_The_American_Mind (20 February 2014), by Charles Kesler, The Claremont Institute
2010s, Interview with Charles Kesler (2014)
“That which is good for the enemy harms you, and that which is good for you harms the enemy.”
Quello che giova al nimico nuoce a te, e quel che giova a te nuoce al nimico.
Rule 1 from Machiavelli's Lord Fabrizio Colonna: libro settimo (Book 7) http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101013672561;view=1up;seq=176 (Modern Italian uses nemico instead of nimico.)
The Art of War (1520)
Rakesh Khurana (2010). From higher aims to hired hands: The social transformation of American business schools and the unfulfilled promise of management as a profession. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 27
Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 7, “A Semiotic War” (p. 159)
Peter Vecsey (May 26, 2000) "Looks Like Larry's Indy Mood to Stay", New York Post.
“One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.”
15 February 1788
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788-1794)
“The best is the enemy of the good.”
Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.
"La Bégueule" (Contes, 1772)
Variant translations:<p>The perfect is the enemy of the good.
The better is the enemy of the good.
translation of earlier traditional Italian Il meglio è nemico del bene, attested since 1603: Proverbi italiani (Italian Proverbs), by Orlando Pescetti http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/orlando-pescetti/ (c. 1556 – c. 1624) ( p. 30 https://books.google.com/books?id=0fkXqSJmiyEC&pg=PA30-IA2&q=%22Il%20meglio%20%C3%A8%20nemico%20del%20bene%22#v=onepage, p. 45 https://books.google.com/books?id=IRPam75-SI4C&pg=RA1-PT45&q=%22Il%20meglio%20%C3%A8%20nemico%20del%20bene%22#v=onepage)
Voltaire cites this saying in his poem "La Bégueule" ("The prude woman") while ascribing it to an unnamed "Italian sage"; he also gives the saying (without attribution) in Italian (Il meglio è l'inimico del bene [note spelling difference: l'inimico instead of nemico for "[the] enemy") in the article "Art Dramatique" ("Dramatic Art", 1770) in the Dictionnaire philosophique
Citas