Any one detail, followed through to its source, will usually reveal the general state of readiness of the whole organization.

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.

Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches.

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.

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.

Half-truths are like half a brick - they can be thrown farther.

Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.

Any fool can do something cool and look cool, but it takes skill to make something uncool cool again.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

Where would I be without my sense of direction.

History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable.

Each of them always gravitating toward the other. Yet still they do not touch.

I did not plan to make the Cube.

Looking for love is tricky business, like whipping a carousel horse.

The first principle of economic symmetry: building the economic power to consume simultaneously with the industrial power to produce.

Everyone comes back. It makes no difference how far we wander, we always have our country, our land, in our souls and our minds.