Hyman Rickover Quotes
Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience.
The man in charge must concern himself with details. If he does not consider them important, neither will his subordinates.
Human experience shows that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done
It is a human inclination to hope things will work out, despite evidence or doubt to the contrary. A successful manager must resist this temptation.
Any one detail, followed through to its source, will usually reveal the general state of readiness of the whole organization.
More than ambition, more than ability, it is rules that limit contribution; rules are the lowest common denominator of human behavior. They are a substitute for rational thought.
When the men in Russia foul up, they are dismisses, sometimes losing their necks. But we protect those who fail and press them to the government bosom.
Trying to make things work in government is sometimes like trying to sew a button on a custard pie.
All new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom.
We bury the men who do the nation's creative work under layers of administrators and mountains of memoranda. We shrivel creativity by endless frustrations.
I have a son. I love my son. I want everything that I do to be so safe that I would be happy to have my son operating it. That's my fundamental rule.
To doubt one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. Don't defend past actions; what is right today may be wrong tomorrow. Don't be consistent; consistency is the refuge of fools.
A child is being properly educated only when he is learning to become independent of his parents.
Those involved with practical reactors, humbled by their experiences, speak less and worry more.
Above all, we should bear in mind that our liberty is not an end in itself; it is a means to win respect for human dignity for all classes of our society.
Free discussion requires an atmosphere unembarrassed by any suggestion of authority or even respect.
A system under which it takes three men to check what one is doing is not control; it is systematic strangulation.
Knowing more about the public effects his work will have, the engineer ought to consider himself an "officer of the court" and keep the general interest always in mind.
