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.
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)
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