Good Quote for Business Intelligence

"An ounce of hard data is worth a ton of speculation"

Winston Churchill was a Data Analyst

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." -Winston Churchill

Quote on Business Failure

"I can't give you a surefire formula for success, but there is one for failure: Try to please everybody all the time." Herbert Bayard Swope

Thomas Edison Believes in Iterations, Too!

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison

Hugh Prather speaking to Agilists

"It's simple: if I never try anything, I never learn anything."-Hugh Prather

Quote for Agilists

Salman Rushdie speaking to agilists: "A bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world."

Quote

"If one FELT successful, there'd be so little incentive to BE successful." Alain de Botton

Louis L'amour Speaking to Future Agilists

"Are you where you want to be if it doesn't work?" - Louis L'amour speaking to future agilists.

Einstein Quotes on Education

"It is,in fact, nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the curiosity of inquiry" Einstein

Quote from Edmund Burke

"Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises; for never intending to go beyond promises, it costs nothing."-Edmund Burke

Love this Quote from Bertrand Russell

"In all affairs, it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted"-Bertrand Russell

Quote

"Whoever best describes the problem is the one most likely to solve it." -Dan Roam (Back of the Napkin)

Another Quote on Education

"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is." Isaac Asimov

Quote on Eduction

"Eduction is not the answer to the question. Education is the means to the answer to all questions." -Bill Allin

Quote on Leadership

"The great leader speaks little. He never speaks carelessly. He works without self-interest and leaves no trace. When all is finished, the people say, “We did it ourselves.”

-Chinese philosopher, Lao-tzu

Quote on Manager Failure Rate

"We've found that 40 percent of executives hired at the senior level are pushed out, fail or quit within 18 months. It’s expensive in terms of lost revenue. It’s expensive in terms of the individual’s hiring. It’s damaging to morale."

-Kevin Kelly, CEO of executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, discussing the firm's internal study of 20,000 searches.

Business Intelligence Quote

"You can spend millions building the data warehouse, but if you don't have the back office under control, you are wasting your money."
Mike Costa
Corporate Director of Quality Process & Architecture
The Dow Chemical Company

Donella H. Meadows Quote

"Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals."
Donella H. Meadows
Thinking in Systems

"An important function of almost every system is to ensure its own perpetuation."
Same as above

Donella is not speaking of software systems, but rather behavior systems. She's speaking about the war on drugs, welfare, health care, national security, the environment, or any other societal or natural system.

"Keeping sub-purposes and overall system purposes in harmony is an essential function of successful systems."
Same as above

"We misperceive risk, assuming that some things are much more dangerous than they really are and others much less. We live in an exaggerated present - we pay too much attention to recent experience and too little attention to the past, focusing on current events rather than long-term behavior"
Donella H. Meadows
Thinking in Systems

"Usually the greater the discrepancy between the goal and the actual situation, the more emphatic the action will be."
Same as above

"The most damaging example of the systems archetype called "drift to low performance" is the process by which modern industrial culture has eroded the goal of morality. The workings of the trap have been classic, and awful to behold."
Same as above

"We know what to do about drift to low performance. Don't weigh the bad news more heavily than the good. And keep standards absolute."
Same as above

Quote from David Kekich and others.

Anxiety is caused by a lack of control, organization, preperation, and action.
-David Kekich

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
-Henry Bergson

It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must step up the stairs.
-Vaclav Havel

Thomas Edison and Bill Maher

Here are a couple more quotes:

"People would rather be nice than right, rather be sensitive than be true. Well, being nice and sensitive are important, but they're not more important than being right; they're not more important than the truth."
Bill Maher

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work"
Thomas Edison