PHRASES


Laws and Principles

Latin Phrases

Phrases


Laws, Rules and Principles

The Golden Rule:
The golden rule is that there is no golden rule.
               G.B.Shaw

Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
the population is growing.

Conway's Law:
In any organization, there will always be one person who
knows what is going on. This person should be fired.

Mitchell's Law of Committees:
Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
held to discuss it.

Reporting Rule:
The more time you spend in reporting on what you
are doing the less time you have to do anything.
Stability is achieved when you spend all your
time doing nothing but reporting on the nothing
you are doing.

Brooks Law:
Any manpower added to a late project makes it later.

Vail's Second Axiom:
The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
amount of work already completed.

One Page Principle:
A specification that will not fit on one page
of A4 paper cannot be understood.

Simplicity Rule:
When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply,
it should be rejected.

Tussman's Law:
Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.

Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.

Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to
the number of times you have looked at it.

Newlan's Truism:
An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that
the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.

Dilbert's Laws of Work:
Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be
promoted.

It doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say you've
done and what you're going to do.

After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the
month than you did before.

You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a
clipboard.

When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never
talking about themselves.

Everything can be filed under "miscellaneous."

Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail
hour.

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he/she
is supposed to be doing.

At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the
number of pens that person is carrying.

When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.

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Latin Phrases

      De omnibus dubitantum est. (Her seyden süphe et.)

      Non Scholae Sed Vitae Discimus (Okul icin degil, yasam icin ogrenmeliyiz).

      Fortuna favet fortibus (Talih cesurlardan yanadir)

      Una faca una raca (one face one race) [to describe Mediterraneans]

      Tabula rasa (Bos sayfa yaklasimi)

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Phrases

If you understand what you're doing, you're not
learning anything.
              Anonymous

Living a life of integrity is one of the greatest missions we
can undertake.
             Greg Anderson

The concern of man and his destiny
must always be the chief interest of
all technical effort. Never forget it
among your diagrams and equations.
              Albert Einstein

One's certainty varies inversely with one's knowledge.
             Bertrand Russell

The real voyage of discovery is not seeking new lands
But seeing with new eyes.
              Marcel Proust

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
              Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Success is getting what you want;
Happiness is wanting what you get.
              Brother Dave Gardner

Real friends are those who, when you've made a fool of
yourself, don't feel that you've done a permanent job.
             Anonymous

Love does not consist in gazing at each other
but in looking outward together in the same direction.
             Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Never lie in bed at night asking yourself questions you can't answer.
             Charles M.Schulz

Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.
             Anonymous

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it
to change; and the realist adjusts the sails.
            William Arthur Ward

A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he's crossing a
one-way street.
            Anonymous

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible
worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
            Anonymous

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.
           Aristoteles

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark;
the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
          Plato

Verstehen kann man das Leben rückwaerts,
leben muss man aber vorwaerts.
   (You can understand the life backwards
   but you must live forwards.)
         Sören Kierkegaard

A politician is a person who can make waves and
then make you think he's the only one who can save the ship.
         Ivern Ball

Politicians are like diapers. They both should be changed often.
And for the same reason!
         Anonymous

Definition of a good politician:
The ability to predict what will happen next week,
next month and next year, and the ability to explain afterwards,
why they didn't.
         Winston Churchill

Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an
even smaller hole, with weapons singularly illdesigned for the
purpose.
        Winston Churchill

We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.
       Winston Churchill

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they
have exhausted all other alternatives.
         Abba Eban

Public officials are not a group apart.
They inevitably reflect the moral tone of the society in which they live.
        John F. Kennedy, Message to Congress, April 27, 1961

Democracy isn't the right to be equal; it is the equal right to be different.
        Anonymous

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have
been searching for evidence which could support this.
        Bertrand Russell

Treat the media as you would any other watchdog.
Stay calm, be friendly, let them sniff your hand and
never turn your back.
        Amy Sprinkles, Public Information Officer,
        City of Grand Prairie (Texas)

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors,and also to love our enemies;
probably because they are generally the same people.
        G.K. Chesterton

Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.
        Anonymous

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of
those we don't like?"
        Jean Cocteau

We usually see only the things we are looking for so much
so that we sometimes see them where they are not.
        Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind

I always wondered why somebody doesn't do something about that.
Then I realized I was somebody.
        Lily Tomlin

No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.
       Anonymous

The reasonable man accomodates himself to the ways of the world.
The unreasonable man attempts to get the world to accomodate itself
to his ways. Progress depends on unreasonable men.
       G. B. Shaw

To Mom and Dad:
For teaching me to ask questions.
To Jack and Katie:
For giving me the chance to experience the joys of parenthood.
        A Dedication

The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the
center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South
Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South
End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
         Anonymous

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three left turns do.
         Anonymous

"The only person who welcomes change is a wet baby."
         Leslie J. Flanders

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
         Anonymous

If you want to make enemies,
try to change something.
         Woodrow Wilson

Change starts when someone sees the next step.
         William Drayton

One must have chaos in ones self
in order to give birth to a dancing star.
         Fredrick Nietzsche

It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love
with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear....
It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket
is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.
         Marilyn Ferguson, American Futurist

We tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a
wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress
while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
          Petronius, 210 B.C. , Greek philosopher

What is most needed in management today is the ability to think
independently and creatively; to function in an imperfect, changing, and
ambiguous environment; to make decisions when all the data required to
solve the problem are not available; to negotiate and compromise, to be
risk-seeking and entrepreneurial; not to rely on quantitative analytical
data; to recognize short - and long-term implications; to avoid the obvious
and solely subjective; to develop effective working relations with peers;
to motivate people and resolve conflict; and to establish effective
informational networks.
          Arthur F. Oppenheimer

The first management job is planning, a combination of realistic
calculations and crystal ball gazing. It is an exercise in arithmetic and
imagination in separating the possible from the impossible.
           from a booklet published by US Dept. of Labor

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine
your facts is another.
            John Burroughs

The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder,
friction and malperformance.
           Peter Drucker

A good plan violently executed _now_ , is better than a perfect plan next week.
           General George S. Patton, Jr. , War as I Knew It, 1947

The beginning is the most important part of the work.
           Plato

Take your work seriously but yourself lightly.
           C.W. Metcalf

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the
belief that one's work is terribly important.
           Bertrand Russell

It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
          French management saying

You can make a complicated system uncomplicated
by stripping out all the useful features.
           Dr. Pete

 It is much easier to suggest solutions
when you know nothing about the problem.
            Anonoymous
 

Decide promptly, but never give any reasons.
Your decisions may be right, but your reason are sure to be wrong.
          Lord Mansfield

"Sir, What is the secret of your success?" a reporter asked a bank
president.
"Two words."
"And, Sir, what are they?"
"Right decisions."
"And how do you make right decisions?"
"One word."
"And, Sir, what is that?"
"Experience."
"And how do you get Experience?"
"Two words."
"And, Sir, what are they?"
"Wrong decisions."
        Anonoymous

Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes.
          Oscar Wilde

Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes
instead of old ones.
          Anonymous

An expert is soneone who knows some of the worst mistakes
that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them.
         Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), German Physicist

Public judgment, the most advanced form of public opinion, is a
genuine form of knowledge that on certain aspects of issues
deserves to carry more weight than that of scientific experts.
          Oct./Nov. Modern Maturity, p.11,
          Coming to Public Judgement, Yankelovich

Perfection is our goal. Excellence will be tolerated.
          TQM Motto from the International Association of
          Business Communication

The things we fear most in organization - fluctuations, disturbances,
imbalances-are the primary sources of creativity.
          Margaret J. Wheatley

There is less to fear from outside competition than
from inside inefficiency, discourtesy and bad service.
          Anonymous

A bureaucracy once established turns away from whatever task it
is supposed to do and instead works to administer itself.
         Max Weber

Financial statements are like fine perfume; to be sniffed but not swallowed.
         Abraham Brilloff

Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
give it back to them.
         Anonymous

What is a committee?
A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.
         Richard Harkness, The New York Times, 1960

To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three
men, two of them absent.
        Anonymous

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
          Peter F. Drucker

A person who can speak many languages is not necessarily more valuable
than a person who can listen well in one.
          Anonymous

The best thing that you can do with school is to see that, if possible,
it does not interfere with your education.
         Tom McRae, District Administrator

"No one has completed his education who has not learned to live
with an insoluble problem."
          Edmund S. Kiefer

You can tell how much our society is changing when you walk into the men's
restroom and find BITNET addresses on the wall instead of phone numbers.
          Fred Colunga (1944-1993)

MIS gökte yildiz saymak gibidir, ne basi vardir ne de sonu vardir.
         Rahmi Koç, Koç-Unisys Erisim Dergisi, Özel Sayi, Temmuz 1995, s.8

Bilgi toplumu asureye benzer. Asurenin içinde baska yiyecekler var.
O yiyecekleri uygun bir biçimde biraraya getirip pisirmedi?iniz takdirde
asure olmaz.
        Tinaz Titiz, Koç-Unisys Erisim Dergisi, Kis 1995, s.12

Engineers think that equations approximate the real world.
Scientists think that the real world approximates equations.
Mathematicians are unable to make the connection...
       Anonymous

If it works, it is obsolete.
       Marshall McLuhan

Either find a way, or make one.
       Hannibal, Carthaginian general (b.247 BC)

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
        Susan Ertz

 "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it
put more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise
than what it might appear to others that what you were or might
have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have
appeared to them to be otherwise.'"
         Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"

Life is sexually transmitted.
        Anonymous

An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
        Anonymous

Living on Earth is expensive, but it does include a free
trip around the sun.
        Anonymous

Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which
one can die.
        Anonymous

Jury:
Twelve people who determine which client has the better
attorney.

Expecting the world to treat you fairly
because you are a good person,
is like expecting the bull not to attack you
because you are a vegetarian.
       Penny Pennington


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