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Some of my favorite quips...
[alternative index without frames]
On Process Improvement and QualityQuips on Priorities, Change, Quality, and Leadership
(including quotes from Steven Covey and W. Edwards Deming)
Other Favorites...
- Quotes from Archers or about Archery
- Quotes from DragonHeart
- Other Archery Quotes:
- Archery Tips
- Oath of Robin Hood
- Brave Knight Bowen's Ancient Code
- (return to archery site map)
(i.e., quotes from my graduate Relational Database Design class)
- Early Politicians and Religion
- Why Ask Why and other strange observations
- Bottom of page
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©1995-2007 Gregory M. Bowen
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Priorities, Change, Quality and Leadership
"Character: Who you are when no one but God is watching"
-- mug (no credit given), a gift from my brother
"Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine"
-- Unknown
"Character is much easier kept than recovered"
-- Thomas Paine
"Be the change you want to create"
-- Gandhi
"You cannot cross a chasm in two steps"
-- From Eric Booth's (ebooth@csc.com) email footer, no credit given
"Try not -- do or do not -- there is no try" -- Yoda (from Star Wars)
"Adventure is worthwhile in itself" -- Amelia Earhart
"May you live in interesting times." -- An Ancient Chinese Curse
"Good, fast, cheap -- pick any two!" -- Unknown
"If you aim at nothing, you are sure to hit your target" -- Unknown
to archery quotes
"He who hurries cannot walk with dignity." -- From a Chinese fortune cookie
"No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal."
-- Marilyn Ferguson
"To see life as it is, rather than how it should be -- that is madness!"
Don Quixote, in Man of LaMancha, from Cervantes
Quotes from W. Edwards Deming...
also see Quality and Deming Management Theory.
"Faced with the problems of people (management included), management, in my experience, goes into a state of paralysis, taking refuge in the formation of QC-Circles and groups for EI, EP, and QWL (Employee Involvement, Employee Participation, and Quality of Work Life). These groups predictably disintegrate within a few months from frustration, finding themselves unwilling parties to a cruel hoax, unable to accomplish anything, for the simple reason that no one in management will take action on suggestions for improvement."
-- Out of the Crisis, p.85
"A company cannot buy its way into quality -- it must be led into quality by top management."
-- Out of the Crisis, p.
"Support of top management is not sufficient. It is not enough that top management commit themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to -- that is, what they must do. These obligations cannot be delegated. Support is not enough: action is required."
-- Out of the Crisis, p.21
"MBWA (management by walking around) is hardly ever effective.
The reason is that someone in management, walking around, has little idea about what questions to ask,
and usually does not pause long enough at any spot to get the right answers."
-- Out of the Crisis, p.22
Quotes from Steven Covey...
Also see Quality and Covey Links.
"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing!"
"Go for synergy! When two agree, one is unnecessary."
"The key is not to prioritize what's on our schedule, but to schedule your priorities"
"It's easy to say "no!' when there's a deeper 'yes!' burning inside."
"The problems in life come when we're sowing one thing and
expecting to reap something entirely different."
"What we are communicates far more eloquently than
anything we say, even more than anything we do."
"A life of integrity is the most fundamental source of personal worth."
"Admission of ignorance is often the first step in education."
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is
our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
-- [from Habit One: Be Proactive]
"Our lives are the results of our choices. To blame and accuse other people,
the environment, or other extrinsic factors is
to choose to empower those things to control us."
-- [from Habit One: Be Proactive]
"We can not choose the consequence, but we can choose the action!"
-- [from Habit One: Be Proactive]
"It is not as much what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us,
that makes us what we are!"
-- [from Habit One: Be Proactive]
"The key to creating a Total-Quality organization
is first to create a Total-Quality person
who uses a true north "compass" that is objective and external."
"Success is always inside out."
"The best way to predict your future is to create it.
You can use the same power of creative imagination
that enables you to see a goal before you accomplish it,
or plan a meeting, to create much of the quality of your own reality before you live it."
-- [from Habit Two: Begin with the End in Mind]
"If you live out of your memory, you live out of your history – that's what once was;
if you live out of your imagination, you live out of your potential –
that's what can be!"
-- [from Habit Two: Begin with the End in Mind]
See similar quote from Don Quixote
"Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things."
"For many of us, there's a gap between the compass and the clock--
between what's deeply important and the way we spend our time."
"It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be busy – very busy – without being very effective."
-- [from Habit Two: Begin with the End in Mind]
"The degree to which urgency drives the organization is the degree to which importance does not."
"Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers."
"the key to the ninety-nine is the one -- particularly the one that is testing the
patience and good humor of the many...
It's how you treat the one that reveals how you regard the ninety-nine,
because everyone is ultimately a one."
"Without involvement, there is no commitment."
"Empowerment can't be installed; it has to be grown."
"People are not truly self-governing unless they are free to fail."
"Communication is primarily a function of trust, not of technique.
When trust is high, communication is easy,... it's effective...
But when the trust is low... communication is exhausting"
"Quality of life cannot be achieved by taking the right shortcut.
There is not shortcut. But there is a path...
a meaningful life is not a matter of speed or efficiency" ...but effectiveness
"PC (Production Capability) work is treating employees as volunteers, just as you treat customers as volunteers, because that's what they are. They volunteer the best part -- their hearts and minds.."
Learning from the Past, and Improving
the Future
"...the best way to learn to live from our limitations is to know them."
-- E.W.Dijkstra, 1972, The Humble Programmer, [reprinted in Yourdon, 1979, p.124]
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
-- George Santayana, The Life of Reason [1905-1906]
"...the admission of shortcomings is the primary condition for improvement."
-- E.W.Dijkstra, 1969, "Structured Programming," in
Software Engineering: Report on the Conference Sponsored by the NATO Science Committee,
the first International Software Engineering Conference, [Naur and Randell, editors, p.121]
"Experience is a wonderful thing.
It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again."
-- From the back of a sugar package, no credit given
"All models are wrong.
Some models are useful."
-- George Box
"Quality is measured [at the very least] by the cost of doing things wrong."
-- Crosby, 1979
"One of my major complaints about the computer field is that whereas Newton could say, 'If I have seen further... [than others] it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,' I am forced to say,
"Today we stand on each other's feet.'"
-- Hamming, 1968, p.216, quoting from Sir Issac Newton's letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675/76A similar quote...
"Pigmei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident"
or
"Pigmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves"
-- Lucan AD 39-65, The Civil War, Book II, 10
Software Engineering and Methodologies
"You can't re-engineer a process (or a corporation)
if it was not engineered in the first place"
-- G.M.Bowen
Loss of productivity caused by automation is typical when practices are not changed; when systems "were created to pave a cow path rather than straighten it."
-- D. Wessel, "Service Industries Find Computers Don't Always Raise Productivity,"
The Wall Street Journal, April 19, 1988, p.37.
"The great gulf between art and science is the precision of measure.
Art describes and accumulates; science defines and measures."
-- L.O.Ejiogu, 1987, "The Critical Issues of Software Metrics,"
SIGPLAN Notices, May/June,p.59
"Insane persons believe they can continue doing the same thing over and over
and get a different result."
-- Watts S. Humphrey, 1987, Software Process Management.
"Poor engineering and design are methodology invariant!"
-- Dave Parnas
"The tools we use have a profound (and devious) influence
on our thinking habits, and therefore our thinking abilities."
-- E.W.Dijkstra, 1976, A Discipline of Programming
"Today we tend to go on for years, with tremendous investment to find
that the system, which is not well understood to start with, does not work as anticipated.
We build systems like the Wright brothers built airplanes - build the whole thing, push it
off a cliff, let it crash, and start over again."
-- R.M. Graham, 1969 [in Naur and Randell, p.17]
"Sound methodology can empower and liberate the creative mind;
it cannot inflame or inspire the drudge.
...the most important single effort we can mount
[against the "software crisis"] is to develop ways to grow great designers."
-- Fred P. Brooks, Jr.,
No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering, 1987
"C program run. C program crash. C programmer quit."
-- Unknown,
but maybe a programmer from AT&T when a single character error brought the phone system down for nine hours!
"First Law of Software Safety:
Trustworthy software requires trustworthy programmers!"
-- Shore, 1988, p.372
"If one watches what an average programmer actually does
(compared to what he says he does),
it is apparent that the process of designing a program or system is still art,
characterized by large doses of
folklore, ...black magic, and occasional flashes of intuition."
-- Ed Yourdon & Larry L. Constantine,
Structured Design: Fundamentals of a Discipline of Computer Program
and System Design, 1979, pp. xv-xvi. (see Methodologies).
"The design methodology of the average programmer is ...
'Code and You're-Done'!
-- In other words, purely ad hoc and unrepeatable."
-- G.M.Bowen, inspired by Ed Yourdon's quote on the "average programmer"
(with a little play on words).* For the non-techies, 'Coad and Yourdon,' is an object-oriented software
development method, named after the authors of the book
one whom is Ed Yourdon (see OO Methodologies).
Murphy's Laws and Other Truths
Nothing is as easy as it looks.
There's always one more bug.
Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
Every job will take twice as long as you expect and be half as lucrative.
Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost more than you thought.
If everything seems to be going well, you obviously don't know what is going on.
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it.
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will use it.
If more than one person is responsible for a miscalculation, no one will be at fault.
In any hierarchy, each individual rises to his own level of incompetence and then remains there.
Where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit.
If you try to please everybody, nobody will like it.
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
No good deed goes unpublished.
Self starters will not.
Interchangeable parts -- won't.
90% of everything is crud.
Archery-Related Quotes
"Target archery is seeing how far away you can get and still hit the bull's eye.
Bowhunting is seeing how close you can get and never miss your mark!"
-- Unknown
"The history of the bow and arrow, is the history of mankind"
-- Fred Bear
"So long as the new moon returns in heaven a bent, beautiful bow,
so long will the fascination of archery keep hold in the hearts of men."
-- Maurice Thompson, The Witchery of Archery, 1879
"When you shoot with a gun, one miss is just as vexatious as another. It is a miss -- maybe an inch, maybe an ell, who knows? -- and you gain nothing from it. Your bird is missed, that is all. But with the bow it is the reverse. Will's miss was almost as pleasurable as a hit -- the bird had such a hair breath escape -- the shot was so well sent.."
-- Maurice Thompson, The Witchery of Archery, 1879, p.192
"...an hour's earnest practice each day for a month will make one begin to feel like a bowman, and three months of such work will make him a fairshot at thirty or forty yards."
-- Maurice Thompson, The Witchery of Archery, 1879, p.157
"There is no excellence in archery without great labor."
-- Maurice Thompson, The Witchery of Archery, 1879, p.19
"You will discover that to be a good shot is not the half of what it takes to make a tolerable bird slayer."
-- Maurice Thompson, The Witchery of Archery, 1879, p.18
"The bowman, to be successful as a hunter, must learn to perfection the habits of his game."
-- Maurice Thompson, The Witchery of Archery, 1879, p.128
"But you must be patient and careful;
nor should you expect to become an accomplished archer
without long and severe training."
-- Maurice Thompson, The Witchery of Archery, 1879, 153-154
Quotes from DragonHeart, Sir Bowen
Return to Sir Bowen page.
Draco: Who's the girl?
Bowen: A nuisance! Get rid of her!Draco: Why?
Bowen: They're trying to placate you with a sacrifice!Draco: Oh, now who ever gave them that bright idea?
Bowen: Never mind! Just get rid of her!Draco: How?
Bowen: Eat her!Draco: Oh, please. YUCK!
Bowen: Aren't we squeamish, you ate Sir Egglemore, hypocrite!Draco: I never swallowed, I merely chewed in self-defense.
Draco: When there are no more dragons to slay, how will you make a living, knight?
Bowen: Why? Aside from your misery, what's to loose?
Draco: My soul.
Draco: When you squeeze nobility, the peasants are the ones that feel the pinch.
Bowen: Without you Draco, where will we go, where do we turn?
Draco: To the stars Bowen, to the stars.
Gilbert: I decided to compose the ballad of Bowen.
Gilbert: My humble life is in debt to your exalted prowess, your dauntless courage, and your suburb swift sword.
Gilbert: He's the greatest dragonslayer that is, probably the greatest that ever will be!
Gilbert: Bowen -- you're still alive! Praise be to the saints!
King Einon?: Just to see you in action Bowen -- yours would be the finest blade on the field.
Einstein (1879-1955) My favorite
dyslexic!
"Watch the stars, and from them learn. To the Master's honor all must turn,
each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground."
--Albert Einstein, translation by Dave Fredrick
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler."
--Albert Einstein
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.
That's relativity."
-- Albert Einstein
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
-- Albert Einstein
"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them."
-- Albert Einstein
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited.
Imagination encircles the world.
"What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck,"
for the October 26, 1929 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-- Albert Einstein
When the solution is simple, God is answering.
-- Albert Einstein
Suppressing
Questions By Intimidation
Quotes from my
graduate Relational Database Design
Class
Recently, I came across a piece of paper, used as a bookmark for a textbook, that I had written down quotes from a graduate course. Although, the professor was one of the better instructors at WVU, he had a tendency to trivialize the difficult. As a habit, he made one or more of these comments every class period.
It was a class in Relational Database Design, which included formal (mathematical / logical) proofs of functional dependencies, completeness of relationships, 5th Normal Form, and other stuff. "Back then" this was fairly new technology and pretty intense. I had to tape the class so I could re-listen later for stuff that I missed during class [see Dyslexia--Leveraging Technology (Dictaphones and Tape Players)].
I think he made a joke of it, because he knew it was difficult. He did admit on occasion that some of the material he was learning as he taught us. However, this trivializing tended to cause some students, especially the younger ones, not to ask questions in fear of looking like a fool. Of course, I am used to asking many "foolish questions", so I usually asked anyway. I found it all comical, so I began to write down some of the phrases on the bookmark. I do not recommend that educators adopt this approach, but I hope you find them comical, too:
- "There Exists is fairly easy to understand"
- "Selection is really quite simple"
- "Of course everybody knows..."
- "Unpleasant notation, but nothing hard about it"
- "Elementary set theory"
- "The proof of this is really trivial"
- "To me that makes a lot of sense"
- "That's all there is to it"
- "Now this is hard, I grant you this is not easy"
- "I don't know... this is theory, all I know is what is in the book"
My favorite one:
- "I know this stuff is trivial, but are there any questions?"
Oxymora:
A combination of contradictory or incongruous
words.
- authentic replica
- civil war
- constructive criticism
- criminal lawyer (some my claim "honest lawyer" is the oxymoron)
- cruel kindness
- curved line
- deeply superficial
- down escalator
- friendly take-over
- healthy tan
- hot chili
- jumbo shrimp
- lengthy brief
- military intelligence
- pretty ugly
- sincere lie
- small giants
- sweet sorrow
- totally partial
- wealth of debt
- Techie Oxymora...
- informal inspection (as in Fagan software inspection)
- optional requirement (a mandatory requirement is redundant)
- technical writer
- secure Unix
- Some say... Software Engineering
- See also Why Ask Why quotes.
Miscellaneous Quips and Quotes...
"I don't give them hell. I tell the truth and they THINK it's hell!"
-- Harry S. Truman (from Mike Stark's email footer)
Dorothy: "How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?"
Scarecrow: "I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?"
-- from the Wizard of Oz
T-Shirts and Bumper Stickers
- Do have Change for a Paradigm? -- Signals
- Baroque (adj.): When you are out of Monet -- Signals
- Eschew Obfuscation
(translation: avoid making anything difficult to understand) -- SignalsScientific Expletives
- "When the fecal matter hits the ventilating device" [from one of my old Dialysis Tech bosses]
- "Bovine Defecation"
Various quotes from the net
- Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.
- Make it fool proof and only a fool will use it.
- Lottery: A tax on people who mathematically challenged.
- Better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.
- All generalizations are false, including this one.
- See also Why Ask Why quotes.
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