Quotes about deadline

A collection of quotes on the topic of deadline, doing, time, timing.

Quotes about deadline

Douglas Adams photo

“I love deadlines. I like the whoosing sound they make as they fly by.”

Variant: I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

Frank Zappa photo

“Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Source: Real Frank Zappa Book

Duke Ellington photo

“I don't need time, I need a deadline.”

Duke Ellington (1899–1974) American jazz musician, composer and band leader
Emile Zola photo

“One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

Le Figaro (1881) as quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999) by Elizabeth Knowles and Angela Partington, p. 840.

Osamu Tezuka photo
Napoleon Hill photo

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

As quoted in Diamond Power : Gems of Wisdom from America's Greatest Marketer (2003) by Barry Farber, p. 60

Tom Robbins photo

“But today's dilemmas are even harder to deal with: autonomy vs. control; innovation vs. no surprises; participation and ownership vs. meeting deadlines; and job security vs. excess employees through job design”

Chris Argyris (1923–2013) American business theorist/Professor Emeritus/Harvard Business School/Thought Leader at Monitor Group

Source: On organizational learning (1999), p. 240

“The deadline was two months earlier, but like myself Mike considered deadlines in financial rather than chronological terms.”

T. A. Waters (1938–1998) American magician

Source: The Probability Pad (1970), Chapter 2 (p. 21)

“Without a deadline, the motivation to do a task is small to nonexistent.”

Robert W. Bly (1957) American writer

101 Ways to Make Every Second Count: Time Management Tips and Techniques for More Success With Less Stress (1999)

Ben Croshaw photo
Pierce Brown photo
A. J. Liebling photo

“Inconsiderate to the last, Josef Stalin, a man who never had to meet a deadline, had the bad taste to die in installments.”

A. J. Liebling (1904–1963) American journalist

The New Yorker, March 28, 1953, quoted in David Remnick, "Reporting It All: A.J. Liebling at 100", The New Yorker, March 29, 2004.

Jay Samit photo

“A dream with a deadline is a goal.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 42

Roger Ebert photo

“For 40 years, I didn't miss a single deadline, but since July, I have missed every one. I also, to my intense disappointment, missed the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Having just written my first review since June (The Queen), I think an update is in order.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

"Roger writes to readers" Chicago Sun Times (11 October 2006) http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/roger-writes-to-readers

Constantine P. Cavafy photo

“God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

Source: The Knowledge of the Holy (1978), p. 53.

Philip Johnson photo
George W. Bush photo
Erik Naggum photo

“All experience has taught us that solving a complex problem uncovers hidden assumptions and ever more knowledge, trade-offs that we didn't anticipate but which can make the difference between meeting a deadline and going into research mode for a year, etc.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: is CLOS reall OO? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/917737b7cc8510e3?dmode=source&output=gplain (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Grant Morrison photo

“The priority for the poet must be his poetry, the poetry must determine his agenda and deadlines”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Poetry Quotes

George W. Bush photo
Ira Glass photo

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me... is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.
It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Ira Glass (1959) American radio personality

The Taste Gap: Ira Glass on the Secret of Creative Success, Animated in Living Typography http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/ira-glass-success-daniel-sax/ at brainpickings.org
This American Life

Randy Pausch photo

“Avoiding Procrastination: Doing things at the last minute is much more expensive than just before the last minute. Deadlines are really important: establish them yourself!”

Randy Pausch (1960–2008) American professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design

Time Management (2007)

Margaret Atwood photo

“I no longer feel I'll be dead by thirty; now it's sixty. I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it. I'm still writing, I'm still writing poetry, I still can't explain why, and I'm still running out of time.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

On Writing Poetry (1995)
Context: I no longer feel I'll be dead by thirty; now it's sixty. I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it. I'm still writing, I'm still writing poetry, I still can't explain why, and I'm still running out of time. Wordsworth was sort of right when he said, "Poets in their youth begin in gladness/ But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness." Except that sometimes poets skip the gladness and go straight to the despondency. Why is that? Part of it is the conditions under which poets work — giving all, receiving little in return from an age that by and large ignores them — and part of it is cultural expectation — "The lunatic, the lover and the poet," says Shakespeare, and notice which comes first. My own theory is that poetry is composed with the melancholy side of the brain, and that if you do nothing but, you may find yourself going slowly down a long dark tunnel with no exit. I have avoided this by being ambidextrous: I write novels too. But when I find myself writing poetry again, it always has the surprise of that first unexpected and anonymous gift.

Augusta Savage photo
Napoleon Hill photo