Quotes about planning
page 16

Ze Frank photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
George Boole photo
Gunnar Myrdal photo
Thomas Little Heath photo

“If one would understand the Greek genius fully, it would be a good plan to begin with their geometry.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

Preface p. vi
A History of Greek Mathematics (1921) Vol. 1. From Thales to Euclid

Elisha Gray photo

“Very well, the starting point would be that claim of Professor Quarrey’s, which had been in the news at the beginning of the year, that the country’s greatest export was noxious gas. And who would like to stir up the fuss again? Obviously, the Canadians, cramped into a narrow band to the north of their more powerful neighbors, growing daily angrier about the dirt that drifted to them on the wind, spoiling crops, causing chest diseases and soiling laundry hung out to dry. So she’d called the magazine Hemisphere in Toronto, and the editor had immediately offered ten thousand dollars for three articles.
Very conscious that all calls out of the country were apt to be monitored, she’d put the proposition to him in highly general terms: the risk of the Baltic going the same way as the Mediterranean, the danger of further dust-bowl like the Mekong Desert, the effects of bringing about climactic change. That was back in the news—the Russians had revised their plan to reverse the Yenisei and Ob. Moreover, there was the Danube problem, worse than the Rhine had ever been, and Welsh nationalists were sabotaging pipelines meant to carry “their” water into England, and the border war in West Pakistan had been dragging on so long most people seemed to have forgotten that it concerned a river.
And so on.
Almost as soon as she started digging, though, she thought she might never be able to stop. It was out of the question to cover the entire planet. Her pledged total of twelve thousand words would be exhausted by North American material alone.”

June “A PLACE TO STAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

W. Edwards Deming photo

“In enterprise modelling, we want to define the actions performed within an enterprise, and define constraints for plans and schedules which are constructed to satisfy the goals of the enterprise. This leads to the following set of informal competency questions:”

Mark S. Fox (1952) Canadian computer scientist and Professor of Industrial Engineering

Temporal projection - Given a set of actions that occur at different points in the future, what are the properties of resources and activities at arbitrary points in time?
Planning and scheduling - what sequence of activities must be completed to achieve some goal? At what times must these activities be initiated and terminated?
Execution monitoring and external events - What are the effects of the occurrence of external and unexpected events (such as machine breakdown or the unavailability of resources) on a plan or schedule?
Time-based competition - we want to design an enterprise that minimizes the cycle time for a product. This is essentially the task of finding a minimum duration plan that minimizes action occurrences and maximizes concurrency of activities.
Source: Methodology for the Design and Evaluation of Ontologies (1995), p. 3-4

“On the assumption that the shoot-down was central to the larger plan of Hutu Power and genocide, this would have required a miracle of Hutu incompetence; but it would be entirely understandable if it was carried out by Kagame’s force as part of their planned program to seize state power.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Peterson and Herman, “Genocide Denial and Genocide Facilitation: Gerald Caplan and The Politics of Genocide” https://mronline.org/2010/07/04/genocide-denial-and-genocide-facilitation-gerald-caplan-and-the-politics-of-genocide/, MR Online, July 4, 2010.
2010s

Immanuel Kant photo
Bill Maher photo
Vitruvius photo
Adolf Galland photo

“Never abandon the possibility of attack. Attack even from a position of inferiority, to disrupt the enemy's plans. This often results in improving one's own position.”

Adolf Galland (1912–1996) German World War II general and fighter pilot

Quoted in "The First and the Last," 1954.
The First and the Last (1954)

Jared Diamond photo
Joel Fuhrman photo
Rachel Maddow photo

“You see, on the landscape…there's the yelling. Into the chessboard. Upon which is a tent! For the enemy camp! Master plan!”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC (26 March 2009)
In response to Michael Steele's defense of his various gaffes as "strategic", during which he mixed several metaphors.

Clive Staples Lewis photo
Stephenie Meyer photo
Michael Grimm photo

“From my days as a Marine in combat, to my tenure working undercover in the FBI, to my service as a Congressman representing the hardworking families on Staten Island and Brooklyn, I have spent my entire life fighting on behalf of the People with honor and integrity. The past 24 hours haven’t changed a thing, and I plan to work harder than ever for the people I am exceedingly proud to represent. To my constituents, let me be absolutely clear: the trumped-up charges against me are false and after my peers see the truth, justice will prevail. And while this groundless witch hunt proves there are powerful forces dedicated to tarnishing my reputation as part of a political vendetta, I’ll tell you what it doesn’t do: It doesn’t take back the billions of dollars in Superstorm Sandy aid I fought for in Congress, it doesn’t undo my flood insurance reform bill that will spare millions of Americans from skyrocketing premiums and home foreclosures, and it doesn’t negate the countless success stories of my office helping constituents with difficult challenges, from losing health coverage thanks to Obamacare, to being denied veteran survivor benefits, to helping our seniors deal with multiple daily struggles, simply put…the lives my staff and I have touched for the better are innumerable. And that’s why I am so heartened by the outpouring of love and support – I am truly humbled to work for the most salt of the earth people in the world. Which is why I am back working hard and doing what I’ve done from day one, relentless trying to improve their quality of life through old fashioned hard work and determination.”

Michael Grimm (1970) American politician

Facebook (29 April 2014) https://www.facebook.com/repmichaelgrimm
2010s

Megan Mullally photo

“We think the more detailed and exhaustive our plans, the more likely the future will actually mirror our vision. But it rarely even comes close.”

Tim Hurson (1946) Creativity theorist, author and speaker

Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking

Robbie Williams photo

“I sit and talk to God, and he just laughs at my plans.”

Robbie Williams (1974) British singer and entertainer

Feel
Escapology (2002)

Nico Perrone photo
Neil Armstrong photo
Chinmayananda Saraswati photo

“Plan out your work Then work out your plan. The former without the latter is a sheer waste. The latter without the former is mere unproductive confusion.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

M. Balamuralikrishna photo
El Lissitsky photo
H. G. Wells photo
Russell L. Ackoff photo

“If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.”

Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) American psychologist

As quoted in Perfecting Private Practice (2004) by Joan Neehall-Davidson, p. 95.
1970s and later
Source: book The Farther Reaches of Human

Rick Santorum photo
David Zabriskie photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Lyndall Urwick photo

“Planning is essentially the analysis and measurement of materials and processes in advance of the event and the perfection of records so that we may know exactly where we are at any given moment. In short it is attempting to steer each operation and department by chart and compass and chronometer – not “by guess and by God.””

Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983) British management consultant

Source: 1950s, The pattern of management, 1956, p. 85; Cited in: " Lyndall Fownes Urwick http://www.managers-net.com/Biography/biograph7.html," at managers-net.com, 2016.

Hillary Clinton photo
Matt Birk photo

“It was because of my faith and my pro-life conviction, but ultimately, it was because of my kids, I want to not just talk about my faith, but I want to live it out too. And a few years ago, some of the older ones [were] aware of Planned Parenthood and what occurs there, and so, I wanted to set the example for them and be a dad that they could be proud of”

Matt Birk (1976) Player of American football

Pro-life NFL star Matt Birk reveals real reason he skipped meeting with Obama https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/exclusive-video-nfl-star-matt-birk-reveals-real-reason-he-skipped-meeting-w (April 15, 2016)

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi photo
Hugo Chávez photo

“Privatization is a neoliberal and imperialist plan. Health can’t be privatized because it is a fundamental human right, nor can education, water, electricity and other public services. They can’t be surrendered to private capital that denies the people from their rights.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Hugo Chávez during his closing speech at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. January 31, 2005. http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1486
2005

William John Macquorn Rankine photo
Craig Ferguson photo
George Holyoake photo

“Mr. Owen looked upon men through the spectacles of his own good-nature. He seldom took Lord Brougham's advice "to pick his men." He never acted on the maxim that the working class are as jealous of each other as the upper classes are of them. The resolution he displayed as a manufacturer he was wanting in as a founder of communities…. No leader ever took so little care as Mr, Owen in guarding his own reputation. He scarcely protested when others attached his name to schemes which were not his. The failure of Queenwood was not chargeable to him. When his advice was not followed he would say : "Well, gentlemen, I tell you what you ought to do. You differ from me. Carry out your own plans. Experience will show you who is right." When the affair went wrong then it was ascribed to him. Whatever failed under his name the public inferred failed through him. Mr. Owen was a general who never provided himself with a rear guard. While he was fighting in the front ranks priests might come up and cut off his commissariat. His own troops fell into pits against which he had warned them. Yet he would write his next dispatch without it occurring to him to mention his own defeat, and he would return to his camp without missing his army. Yet society is not so well served that it need hesitate to forgive the omissions of its generous friends. To Mr. Owen will be accorded the distinction of being a philosopher who devoted himself to founding a Science of Social Improvement and a philanthropist who gave his fortune to advance it. Association, which was but casual before his day, he converted into a policy and taught it as an art. He substituted Co-operation for coercion in the conduct ot industry and the willing co-operation of intelligence certain of its own reward, for sullen labour enforced by the necessity of subsistence, seldom to be relied on and never satisfied.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

George Jacob Holyoake in The History of Co-operation in England (1875; 1902).

Jean Paul Sartre photo

“The anti‐Semite understands nothing about modern society. He would be incapable of conceiving of a constructive plan; his action cannot reach the level of the methodical; it remains on the ground of passion. To a long‐term enterprise he prefers an explosion of rage analogous to the running amuck of the Malays. His intellectual activity is confined to interpretation; he seeks in historical events the signs of the presence of an evil power. Out of this spring those childish and elaborate fabrications which give him his resemblance to the extreme paranoiacs. In addition, anti‐Semitism channels evolutionary drives toward the destruction of certain men, not of institutions. An anti‐Semitic mob will consider it has done enough when it has massacred some Jews and burned a few synagogues. It represents, therefore, a safety valve for the owning classes, who encourage it and thus substitute for a dangerous hate against their regime a beneficent hate against particular people. Above all this naive dualism is eminently reassuring to he anti‐Semite himself. If all he has to do is to remove Evil, that means that the Good is already given. He has no need to seek it in anguish, to invent it, to scrutinize it patiently when he has found it, to prove it in action, to verify it by its consequences, or, finally, to shoulder he responsibilities of the moral choice be has made. It is not by chance that the great outbursts of anti‐Semitic rage conceal a basic optimism. The anti‐Semite as cast his lot for Evil so as not to have to cast his lot for Good. The more one is absorbed in fighting Evil, he less one is tempted to place the Good in question. One does not need to talk about it, yet it is always understood in the discourse of the anti‐Semite and it remains understood in his thought. When he has fulfilled his mission as holy destroyer, the Lost Paradise will reconstitute itself. For the moment so many tasks confront the anti‐Semite that he does not have time to think about it. He is in the breach, fighting, and each of his outbursts of rage is a pretext to avoid the anguished search for the Good.”

Pages 31-32
Anti-Semite and Jew (1945)

Robby Krieger photo
Jay Samit photo
Paul Erdős photo

“The SF created us to enjoy our suffering. … The sooner we die, the sooner we defy His plans.”

Paul Erdős (1913–1996) Hungarian mathematician and freelancer

SF was an abbreviation for "Supreme Fascist" — the term Erdős often used to refer to God, as quoted in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers : The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth (1998) by Paul Hoffman, p. 4

Jeffrey Tucker photo
Al Gore photo

“The impact God has planned for us doesn't occur when we're pursuing impact. It occurs when we're pursuing God.”

Phil Vischer (1966) American puppeter

Source: Me, Myself, & Bob (2006), p. 251

Thomas Edison photo

“Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

As quoted in Artifacts : An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley (2001) by Christine Finn. p. 90.
Date unknown

Neil Armstrong photo
H. G. Wells photo
Michael T. Flynn photo

“And he knows the consequences: “War ruins everything, even the bonds between brothers. War is irrational; its only plan is to bring destruction: It seeks to grow by destroying.””

Michael T. Flynn (1958) 25th United States National Security Advisor

Pope Francis, Introduction
The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies (2016)

Immanuel Kant photo

“When Galilei let balls of a particular weight, which he had determined himself, roll down an inclined plain, or Torricelli made the air carry a weight, which he had previously determined to be equal to that of a definite volume of water; or when, in later times, Stahl changed metal into lime, and lime again into metals, by withdrawing and restoring something, a new light flashed on all students of nature. They comprehended that reason has insight into that only, which she herself produces on her own plan, and that she must move forward with the principles of her judgments, according to fixed law, and compel nature to answer her questions, but not let herself be led by nature, as it were in leading strings, because otherwise accidental observations made on no previously fixed plan, will never converge towards a necessary law, which is the only thing that reason seeks and requires. Reason, holding in one hand its principles, according to which concordant phenomena alone can be admitted as laws of nature, and in the other hand the experiment, which it has devised according to those principles, must approach nature, in order to be taught by it: but not in the character of a pupil, who agrees to everything the master likes, but as an appointed judge, who compels the witnesses to answer the questions which he himself proposes. Therefore even the science of physics entirely owes the beneficial revolution in its character to the happy thought, that we ought to seek in nature (and not import into it by means of fiction) whatever reason must learn from nature, and could not know by itself, and that we must do this in accordance with what reason itself has originally placed into nature. Thus only has the study of nature entered on the secure method of a science, after having for many centuries done nothing but grope in the dark.”

Preface to 2nd edition, Tr. F. Max Müller (1905)
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

Mitt Romney photo
Thich Nhat Tu photo
Gerd von Rundstedt photo
Sharron Angle photo
Alistair Cooke photo
Mao Zedong photo
David Pogue photo

“For the last 15 years, Microsoft’s master business plan seems to have been, "Wait until somebody else has a hit. Then copy it."”

David Pogue (1963) Technology writer, journalist and commentator

" State of the Art: Bing, the Imitator, Often Goes Google One Better http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/technology/personaltech/09pogue.html?emc=eta1," The New York Times, July 09, 2009.

Nathanael Greene photo

“I forwarded your Excellency a return of troops at this post, and a copy of a plan for establishing magazines. I could wish to know your pleasure as to the magazines, as soon as possible.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (31 October 1776)

Herman Kahn photo

“Equally important to not appearing "trigger-happy" is not to appear prone to either accidents or miscalculations. Who wants to live in the 1960's and 1970's in the same world with a hostile strategic force that might inadvertently start a war? Most people are not even willing to live with a friendly strategic force that may not be reliably controlled. The worst way for a country to start a war is to do it accidentally, without any preparations. That might initiate an all- out "slugging match" in which only the most alert portion of the forces gets off in the early phase. Both sides are thus likely to be clobbered," both because the initial blow was not large enough to be decisive and because the war plans are likely to be inappropriate. To repeat: On all these questions of accident, miscalculation, unauthorized behavior, trigger-happy postures, and excessive destructiveness, we must satisfy ourselves and our allies, the neutrals, and, strangely important, our potential enemies. Since it is almost inevitable that the future will see more discussion of these questions, i will be important for us not only to have made satisfactory preparations, but also to have prepared a satisfactory story. Unless every-body concerned, both laymen and experts, develops a satisfactory image of strategic forces as contributing more to security than insecurity it is most improbable that the required budgets, alliances, and intellectual efforts will have the necessary support. To the extent that people worry about our strategic forces as themselves exacerbating or creating security problems, or confuse symptoms with the disease, we may anticipate a growing rejection of military preparedness as an essential element in the solution to our security problem and a turning to other approaches not as a complement and supplement but as an alternative. In particular, we are likely to suffer from the same movement toward "responsible" budgets pacifism, and unilateral and universal disarmament that swept through England in the 1920's and 1930's. The effect then was that England prematurely disarmed herself to such an extent that she first almost lost her voice in world affairs, and later her independence in a war that was caused as much by English weakness as by anything else.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

W. Richard Scott photo
George W. Bush photo
John Zerzan photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Charlotte Perkins Gilman photo

“Where young boys plan for what they will achieve and attain, young girls plan for whom they will achieve and attain.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Ch. 5 http://books.google.com/books?id=94EEAAAAYAAJ&q=%22achieve+and+attain+young+girls+plan+for+whom+they+will+achieve+and+attain%22&pg=PA87#v=onepage
Women and Economics (1898)

Patrick Buchanan photo
Taylor Caldwell photo
C. Wright Mills photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Raheem Kassam photo
Langston Hughes photo
Ivan Konev photo

“We plan alone but we fulfill our plans together with the enemy, as it were, in accordance with his opposition.”

Ivan Konev (1897–1973) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "How Wars End: Eye-witness Accounts of the Fall of Berlin" - by Vladimir Sevruk - History - 1974 - Page 27.

Wilfred Thesiger photo
Benjamin R. Barber photo
Manuel Castells photo

“[Urban planning] must be interpreted on the basis of the social effect produced by the political instance in the urban system and/or in the social structure.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach, 1977, p. 276)

James MacDonald photo
A. P. Herbert photo

“There's alcohol in plant and tree.
It must be Nature's plan
That there should be in fair degree
Some alcohol in Man.”

A. P. Herbert (1890–1971) British politician

Number Nine ([1951] 1952) p. 151.

Tim McGraw photo
Hilary Hahn photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo

“After the crisis which I went through coming down here I can make no plans nor anything, I am decidedly better now, but hope, the desire to succeed is gone, and I work because I must, so as not to suffer too much mentally, so as to distract my mind.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, Summer 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 518) p. 22
1880s, 1888

George W. Bush photo
David Rockefeller photo
Robert Burns photo

“The social, friendly, honest man,
Whate'er he be,
'Tis he fulfills great Nature's plan,
And none but he!”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Second Epistle to J. Lapraik, st. 15 (1786).

Stanley Knowles photo

“Plan-less profit-seeking as practiced by the West cannot match the planned export policies of the East.”

Stanley Knowles (1908–1997) Canadian politician

Source: The New Party - (1961), Chapter 7, Program, p. 82

David Attenborough photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“All this could be part of a plan. But it’s some plan, isn’t it?; With mass destruction, pitiless extermination and annihilation going on all the time.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"The Great God Debate", Christopher Hitchens vs. David Wolpe, 23/03/2010 http://youtube.com/watch?v=LzAxygPNRQE?t=15m5s
2010s, 2010

L. Ron Hubbard photo
Johann Hari photo