Most of us as managers are prone to one particular failing: a tendency to manage people as though they were modular components.
Imagine having that to look back at from the age of a hundred and one.
Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, Peopleware
January 9, 1928: Henry Ford was in a spirited mood as he toured the Ford Industrial Exhibit with his son, Edsel, and his aging friend Thomas Edison, feigning fright at the flash of news cameras as a circle of police officers held back admirers and reporters.
The residents of Fordlandia and Belterra are still waiting for Henry Ford.
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia
During the first thirty-five years of the twentieth century, the publishing houses of America printed more than a fifth of a million different books.
Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
The circumstances of the general election of 18— will be well remembered by all those who take an interest in the political matters of the country.
Nothing will ever change the Duchess.
Anthony Trollope, Phineas Redux
Iraq—Sumer—Babylonia—Mesopotamia: under any or all of these names almost every general textbook on the history of mathematics assigns the origins of ‘pure’ mathematics to the distant past of the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
This opens a unique window onto the material, social, and intellectual world of the mathematics of ancient Iraq that historians of other ancient cultures can only dream of.
Elenor Robson, Mathematics in Ancient Iraq
Sometimes you forget all about them in spite of yourself, but all too often the very first thing you realize when you wake up in that they are there again, settling in like bad weather, hovering like plague-bearing insects, swarming precisely as if they were indeed blue demons dispatched on their mission of harassment by none other than the Chief Red Devil of all devils himself; and yet perhaps as often as not it is also as if they squat obscene and vulturelike, waiting and watching you and preening themselves at the same time, their long rubbery necks writhing as if floating.
But even so old pro that you have become, sometimes all you have to hear is the also and also of the drummer signifying on the high-hat cymbal, even in the distance (and it was as if it were the also and also of time itself whispering red alert as if in blue italics), and all you have to do to keep them in their proper place, which is deep in the dozens, is to pat your feet and snap your fingers.
Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues
The reference to Viet Nam is the only thing that differentiates this portion of John F. Kennedy’s 1961 state of the Union address from one that might be heard today.
Nanoscience and nanotechnology will lead to wealth, to security, to better health and better living, but they will only do so if society welcomes them with awareness, education, and responsibility.
Daniel and Mark Ratner, Nanotechnology and Homeland Security
I called Joe Newman at his home in Lucedale, Mississippi.
Strange and very wonderful.
Robert Park, Voodoo Science
On January 3, 1992, a meeting of Russian and American scholars took place in the auditorium of a government building in Moscow.
In the emerging era, clashes of civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace, and an international order based on civilizations is the surest safeguard against world war.
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations
If you will refer to the municipal statistics of the City of New York, you will find that the number of unsolved major crimes during the four years that John F.X. Markham was district attorney was far smaller than under any of his predecessors’ administrations.
And that remark, though intended merely as a good-natured sally, proved strangely prophetic.
S. S. Van Dine, The Benson Murder Case
When I began my search for an answer to the puzzle of why the best firms can fail, a friend offered some sage advice.
I hope this book helps them in this effort.
Clayton Christopher, The Innovator’s Dilemma
Deciding where to begin must plague every person who decides to describe anything, and this author for one is no different.
Algorithmic state machines, therefore, aid in the broad concepts of organization, implementation and evaluation.
Christopher Clare, Designing Logic Systems Using State Machines
By a theist I understand a man who believes that there is a God.
Maybe some truths about God are ones which involve concepts which only a personal ground of being can grasp.
Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism
Heinrich Albert was forty years old, carried a briefcase, and worked in an office high above Broadway in one of downtown Manhattan’s brand-new skyscrapers.
It had been forgotten.
Chad Millman, The Detonators
It was the age of the focus group, of the vox populi transformed into flesh, descended to earth and holding forth majestically in poll results, in town hall meetings, in brand loyalty demographics, in e-mail bulletin boards, in website hits, in browser traffic.
And in the streets and the union halls and the truck stops and the three-flats and the office blocks there remained all along a vocabulary of fact and knowing and memory, of wit and of everyday doubt, a vernacular that could not be extinguished no mater how it was cursed for “cynicism,” a dialect that the focus group could never quite reflect, the resilient language of democracy.
Thomas Frank, One Market Under God
Once upon a time there was Fred Karno.
It is.
Simon Louvish, Chaplin
What distinguishes Pragmatic Programmers?
A Pragmatic Programmer.
Andy Hunt and David Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmer
This familiar desk manifests its presence by resisting my pressures and by deflecting light to my eyes.
True, no experiment may be expected to settle an ontological issue; but this is only because such issues are connected with surface irritations in such multifarious ways, through such a maze of intervening theory.
Willard Quine, Word and Object
Since the mid-seventies, such slogans as “the no-growth economy,” the “deindustrialization of America,” and a long-term “Kondratieff stagnation of the economy” have become popular and are invoked as if axioms.
Will its successor be the Entrepreneurial Society?
Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepeneurship
The man on the street loves his mistaken opinions about free trade, and will not listen to professors of economics.
For our splendid science.
Deirdre McClosky, Economical Writing
In the shade of a high sandstone arch, a Bradly Fighting Vehicle and a platoon of American soldiers from the First Armored Division guarded the main point of entry into the vast and heavily fortified Green Zone along the west bank of the Tigris River, where the Coalition Provisional Authority governed occupied Iraq.
Perhaps he felt, as I did, that we might not meet again for a long time.
George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate
When I was a young journeyman programmer, I would learn about every feature of the languages I was using, and I would attempt to use all those features when I wrote.
It would be nice if products and programming languages were designed to have only good parts.
Douglas Crockford, Javascript: The Good Parts
Sawgrass Village, a tidy development about twenty-five miles east of Jacksonville, Florida, is named for the wild marsh greenery that its turf lawns displaced.
Me and my brother and a lot of people in our generation never got over it.
David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague
When the cat came through the little trapdoor at the bottom of the screen it made a clack-clack sound.
“It’s finished.”
Tony Hillerman, Skinwalkers
It is widely believed that a truly scientific or philosophical attitude towards politics, and a deeper understanding of social life in general, must be based upon a contemplation and interpretation of human history.
It badly needs such justification.
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, where fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.
Jane Austen, Emma
The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.
If any of the provinces of the British empire cannot be made to contribute towards the support of the whole empire, it is surely time that Great Britain should free herself from the expense of defending those provinces in time of war, and of supporting any part of their civil or military establishments in time of peace, and endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
I remember, as a teenager, watching the yellow flame of the Sabbath candles dancing randomly above the white paraffin cylinders that fueled them.
Most of all it has taught me to appreciate the absence of bad luck, the absence of events that might have brought us down, and the absence of the disease, war, famine, and accident that have not—or have not yet—befallen us.
Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard’s Walk
The moon had risen just above the cliff behind her.
“I would like to ask you to sing one for me,” Leaphorn said.
Tony Hillerman, A Thief of Time
When I read The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book for the first time, Eisenhower was in the White House and Liz Taylor had taken Eddie Fisher away from Debbie Reynolds.
As Gertrude Stein said, Life is funny that way.
Janet Malcolm, Two Lives
Hosteen Joseph Joe remembered it like this.
And thinking that, Chee fell across his bed with his bathrobe still on and went, almost instantly, to sleep.
Tony Hillerman, The Ghostway
The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.
What we must recognize is that it is necessary for a philosopher to become a scientist, in this sense, if he is to make any substantial contribution towards the growth of human knowledge.
A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic
Drug use is a major issue in the United States.
Addressing that demand may be the most salient and difficult way to effectively address international drug smuggling.
Scott Decker and Margaret Chapman, Drug Smugglers on Drug Smuggling
Rattling rhythmically at each floor, the old-fashioned elevator moved upward past glass doors decorated with etchings of flowers.
“I’ll be there.”
Stanislaw Lem, The Investigation
Around the world the cry “Democracy!” has shattered tyranny’s silence and caused the most stubborn of dictators to lose their confidence in the politics of fear.
And what story—whose story—will it be?
Benjamin Berber, An Aristocracy of Everyone
At 19.00 hours, ship’s time, I made my way to the launching bay.
I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
A couple of years after their marriage in 1918, the writer Robert Graves and his painter wife Nancy found themselves unable to make ends meet.
Reduced to a modest council house in Kent in the 1970s, Betty eked out her last years living on handouts from the state, a small stipend from her one-time lover, and memories.
Virginia Nicholson, Among the Bohemians
On the morning of April 24, an hour past dawn, a man named Palmer Stoat shot a rare African black rhinoceros.
The Coast Guard routinely discounts these sightings as an illusion caused by foul weather, since the lighthouse is known to be empty and out of service.
Carl Hiaasen, Sick Puppy
Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbors among whom, our doctor followed his profession.
He knows the way, however, to Boxall Hill as well as ever he did, and was willing to acknowledge that the tea there is almost as good as it ever was at Greshamsbury.
Anthony Trollop, Doctor Thorne
Freddie was a liar.
One of those shadows is Freddie.
Donald Westlake, Smoke
Nineteen century civilization has collapsed.
This is the meaning of freedom in a complex society; it gives us all the certainty that we need.
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
In early June 1904 ten thousand people gathered at Alexandra Palace in north London.
By influencing how people behave, organize, mobilize, or withdraw from public life, it helps to shape the world in which we live.
Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation
The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention.
If we want to avert an impending calamity and a state of things which may transform the globe into an inferno, we should push the development of flying machines and wireless transmission of energy without an instant’s delay and with all the power and resources of the nation.
Nikola Tesla, The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla
With the temperatureup in the ninties, the Boulevard Bourdon was absolutely deserted.
Bouvard put on his blue coat, a nankeen waistcoat, beaver shoes; and they felt very moved as they went though the village.
Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet
The scene was not exactly new to me.
For my part, I do swear that the story is true, on my word of honor as a cynic and a philosopher.
Rex Stout, Under the Andes
George Gershwin’s father, Morris, was born Moshie Gershovitz (Gershowitz) in St. Petersburg around January 1872.
In any event, his music, with all its powerful emotions and novel ideas, proved to have broad universal appeal, and demonstrated, in most spectacular fashion, the considerable extent to with a sophisticated and original twentieth-century composer could reach a worldwide public.
Howard Pollack, George Gershwin
It is now six years since I withdrew from the prosperous tea firm inherited from my father, and settled down to peaceful retirement in our country villa outside the eastern city gate.
High up above him the morning sun coming through the windows shone on for large gilded characters, written in the Emperor’s faultless calligraphy:
Robert van Gulik, The Chinese Bell Murders
No one, probably, ever felt himself to be more alone in the world than our old friend, the Duke of Omnium, when the Duchess died.
But now I will accept that as courage which I before regarded as arrogance.
Anthony Trollope, The Duke’s Children
America grew in the search for community.
When this ceased to be true, the nation itself would be on the brink of dissolution; and then the political parties, like the nation itself, would have to be reconstructed.
Daniel Boorstin, The Americans
The English naturalist Henry W. Bates spent the years 1949 to 1960 wandering through the forests of Brazil.
The process by which a mimetic analogy is brought about in nature is a problem which involves that of the origin of all species and all adaptations.
Wolfgang Wickler, Mimicry in Plants and Animals
A seasoned proverb of ancient coinage says that those who look for what they should not find what they would not, and it’s clear that when the monkey tried putting on boots it got its foot stuck, just like what happened to a ragged slave girl who although she had never worn shoes on her feet wanted to wear a crown on her head.
And with these new nuptials the greatness of the slave and the entertainment of the tales came to an end—much good may it do you, and to your health!—and I left, one foot after the other, with a little spoonful of honey.
Giambattista Basile, The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones
One of the difficulties that faces the historian of philosophy is that his subject is not at all clearly demarcated for him.
I should be more proud than otherwise if my opposition to it led to my being taken for an old-fashioned empiricist.
A.J. Ayer, Philosophy in the Twentieth Century
Jacob Bronowski is one of a small group of men and women in any age who find all of human knowledge—the arts and sciences, philosophy and psychology—interesting and accessible.
Knowledge is our destiny.
Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden
A lifetime of tracking down the truth had taught Herbert Lionel Matthews that there are no lies as powerful as myths, no truths more fragile than those no one wants to hear.
What happens then will be another Cuban story.
Anthony DePalma, The Man Who Invented Fidel
Alix Mautner was very curious about physics and often asked me to explain things to her.
Things change faster in physics than in the book publishing business.
Richard Feynman, QED
The back door of the Mohawk Grill opens on an alley it shares with the junior high.
“He’s due, all right, that son-of-a-bitch.”
Richard Russo, Mohawk
The behavior of animal and man is based on the processing of data which takes place within groups of interconnected nerve cells.
The temptation for us is too great to assume the ‘singularity’ of man and to refuse to take serious note of such ‘animal’ physiological mechanisms or to believe that we can solve all of the problems by reason and medical help alone. [151]
Jörg-Peter Ewert, Neuroethology
Exploratory data analysis is detective work — — numerical detective work — — or counting detective work — — or graphical detective work.
Some will then find it useful to consider how each one overlaps with or interrelates to each of the others.
John Tukey, Exploratory Data Analysis
During the last ten years of her life, my mother gradually lost her memory.
Ghostly pale, sliding silently along the walls, my papers under my arm, I’d return to the cemetery and read about all the disasters in the world before falling back to sleep, safe and secure in my tomb.
Luis Buñuel, My Last Sigh
My father, Stephen, wanted to write a book before he turned forty, and at thirty-eight realized he better get started.
Count me an optimist.
David Einhorn, Fooling Some of the People All of the Time
American children watch a good deal of television—about twenty-seven hours per week—and American television contains a good deal of advertising.
Taken seriously, the resulting reforms would crate a system of free expression that is both old and new—old in its emphatic reaffirmation of Madisonian aspirations; new in its willingness to adapt our practices to sustain those aspirations under changing social conditions.
Cass Sunstein, Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech
Harlem: the spiritual, cultural, and intellectual center of urban life for pre- and post-Depression black Americans; the fabled nucleus of sensational and forbidden pleasures for white society’s urban upper crust who came there to savor, among other experiences, sensual and exotic nightclub extravaganzas.
Yet in the end, Waller’s voice obtrudes with gentle irony upon these speculations with the final word about what might have been: “One never knows, do one?”
Paul Machlin, Stride: The Music of Fats Waller
Those of us acquainted with their sordid and scandalous story were not surprised to hear, by way of rumors from the various localities where the sorceresses had settled after fleeing our pleasant town of Eastwick, Rhode Island, that the husbands whom the three Godforsaken women had by their dark arts concocted for themselves did not prove durable.
“Where shall we go together this year?”
John Updike, The Widows of Eastwick
… and remember, my little grandchildren, in the old days there were more bears than Indian people, black bears and brown bears, cinnamon bears and the great grizzly, and we had no honey, no sweetness in the teepees, and Brother Bee was always angry, going around stinging the Indian people.
So I wait, survive the winters, and when the money comes, let the final dance begin.
James Crumley, Dancing Bear
This investigation into the changing strategy and structure of the large industrial enterprise in the United States began as an experiment in the writing of comparative business history.
Further studies of the way in which the great enterprise has grown and become administered have, then, more than mere scholarly value.
Alfred Chandler, Strategy and Structure
Whenever an origami activity is brought up in the classroom the students show great interest and enthusiasm.
I hope that the readers will make good use of origamics for learning.
Kazuo Haga, Origamics
Fog was so dense, bird that had been disturbed went flat into a balustrade and slowly fell, dead, at her feet.
‘I can go where I was going afterwards,’ he said to all of them and smiled.
Henry Green, Party Going
Twenty-three hundred years ago Aristotle concluded that, more than anything else, men and women seek happiness.
The problem of meaning will then be resolved as the individual’s purpose merges with the universal flow.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow
Bridesley, Birmingham.
Mrs Eames hid her son’s face in her hand, laughing: ‘You’re too young, that’s too old for you’ she said.
Henry Green, Living
Robert Frost made his visit in November of 1960, just a week after the general election.
Though the headmaster was the younger man, and much shorter, and though Arch was lame and had white hairs coming out of his ears and white stubble all over his face, he felt no more than a boy again—but a very well-versed boy who couldn’t help thinking of the scene described by these old words, surely the most beautiful words ever written or said: His father, when he saw him coming, ran to meet him.
Tobias Wolff, Old School
Once upon a day an old butler named Eldon lay dying in his room attended by the head housemaid Miss Agatha Burch.
Over in England they were married and lived happily ever after.
Henry Green, Loving
Two events occurred in 1908 that were to be of lasting significance in the progress of the automobile industry: William C. Durant, working from his base in the Buick Motor Company, formed the General Motors Company—predecessor of the present General Motors Corporation—and Henry Ford announced the Model T.
The work of creating goes on.
Alfred Sloan, My Years at General Motors
It is certainly of service to a man to know who were his grandfathers and who were his grandmothers if he entertain an ambition to move in the upper circles of society, and also of service to be able to speak of them as of persons who were themselves somebodies in their time.
But I will endeavour to look forward to a time when I may again perhaps be of some humble use.
Anthony Trollope, The Prime Minister
This page last modified on 23 January 2010.