Boren's Laws of Bureaucracy
1) When in doubt, mumble.
2) When in
trouble, delegate.
3) When in charge, ponder.
A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
Sir Barnett Cocks (ca 1907)
A committee is a group of men who individually can do nothing, but collectively can meet and decide that nothing can be done.
A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make.
Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting her company, Mrs. Fields' Cookies
A fool in high station is like a man on the top of a high mountain: everything appears small to him and he appears small to everybody.
L. W. Matsch
A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.
Michael Winner, British film director
Always be smarter than the people who hire you.
Lena Horne
Grande's Law
Always do exactly what your boss would do if he knew what he was talking about.
An expert is anyone from out of town.
McNaughton's Rule
Any argument worth making within a bureaucracy must be capable of being expressed in a simple declarative sentence that is obviously true once stated.
At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.
Business is like a wheelbarrow: nothing ever happens until you start pushing.
Choose any two:
1) Enjoy your
job.
2) Work within the law.
3) Make lots of
money.
Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy.
Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859
NOTICE TO EMPLOYEES
Due to the current business conditions, the light at the end of the tunnel will be switched off until further notice.
Economists are people who work with numbers but who don't have the personality to be accountants.
WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL
Firings will continue until morale improves.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby
I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.
Samuel Goldwyn
If Moses had been a committee the Israelites would still be in Egypt.
J.B.Hughes
If a thing is done wrong often enough, it becomes
right.
COROLLARY: Volume is a defense to error.
Richard A. Leahy
If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented, it wasn't worth doing.
If it sits on your desk for 15 minutes, you've just become the expert.
If it works, leave it alone --- there's no need to understand it. If it fails, try to fix it --- there's no time to understand it.
Bill Pfeifer, commenting on the state of the art in 2D carbon/carbon materials
If not controlled, work will flow to the competent man until he submerges.
Charles Boyle of NASA
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
Vince Lombardi
If you have to tell people how important you are, you're better off in the long run having it printed on a T-shirt.
Joe Martin
If you want to have creative workers, give them enough time to play.
John Cleese
The Peter Principle
In every heirarchy, whether it be government or business, each employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence; every post tends to be filled by an employee incompetent to execute its duties.
In making decisions, you don't start with facts; you start with opinions.
Peter Drucker
In this country, it's hard *not* to be in the top two percent.
University of Nebraska economics professor on the decline of SAT scores among college applicants
It is better to be the reorganizer than the reorganizee.
Norman R. Augustine
It is not the first time that reality has been redefined in order to encourage self-congratulation.
Thomas L. Martin Jr.
Mathematics has given economics rigor, but alas, also mortis.
Robert Heilbroner
Gadarene Swine Law
Merely because the group is in formation does not mean that the group is on the right course.
Robert Cook
Wynne's Law
Negative slack tends to increase.
First Law of Debate
Never argue with a fool --- people might not know the difference.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
First Law of Wing Walking
Never leave hold of what you've got until you've got hold of something else.
Donald Herzberg
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.
H. L. Mencken
Nothing will be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Occasionally it is only comforting in the abstract or the long term to realize that experimental science can be as deaf to expert opinion as to opinionated experts.
M. H. Halstead
Finagle's Fourth Law
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.
Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a larger can.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell
People can be divided into three groups: Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.
John W. Newbern
Rank does not intimidate hardware.
Norman R. Augustine
Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929
Putt's Law
Technology is dominated by two groups of
people:
1) Those who understand what they do not
manage.
2) Those who manage what they do not
understand.
That sounds like a little known fact made up on the spur of the moment.
Chuck Klaer
The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible.
Yale University management professor, responding to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. Smith went on to found Federal Express.
The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill.
Robert Heller
The ideal project is one where people don't have meetings, they have lunch. The size of the team should be the size of the lunch table.
Bill Joy
The insufficient is better than the superfluous.
Tokugawa Ieyasu
The only one who got everything done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.
Imhof's Law
The organization of any bureaucracy is very much like a septic tank; the really big pieces always rise to the top.
The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?
David Sarnoff's associates, responding to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s
There is nothing that is impossible to the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.
Today you can go to a gas station and find the cash register open and the toilets locked. They must think toilet paper is worth more than money.
Joey Bishop
Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money to do it right.
Kurt Herbert Adler
When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision.
Lord Falkland
Where you stand depends on where you sit.
Former HEW Administrator Rufus Miles
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
[Did you] Ever read a resume that lists "Lotus" and "WordPerfect" as job skills? When a piece of software gets listed as a job skill, it has moved from the solution side to the problem side of the ledger. Lotus is really a job skill only for Buddhist monks.
Michael Swaine