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c5f4510
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"William: "I'm sure we can all pull together, sir." Vetinari: "Oh, I do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions."
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freedom
cooperation
revolution
organization
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Terry Pratchett |
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a994753
|
"William: "I'm sure we can all pull together, sir." Vetinari: "Oh, I do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions." --
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freedom
cooperation
revolution
organization
|
Terry Pratchett |
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99358ad
|
Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority. But a good first step would be to build up a critical mass of those willing to 'come out,' thereby encouraging others to do so. Even if they can't be herded, cats in sufficient numbers can make a lot of noise and they cannot be ignored.
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coming-out
cats
organization
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Richard Dawkins |
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163baea
|
The way to find a needle in a haystack is to sit down.
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needle-in-haystack
search
organization
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Beryl Markham |
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b69907a
|
"We all behave like Maxwell's demon. Organisms organize. In everyday experience lies the reason sober physicists across two centuries kept this cartoon fantasy alive. We sort the mail, build sand castles, solve jigsaw puzzles, separate wheat from chaff, rearrange chess pieces, collect stamps, alphabetize books, create symmetry, compose sonnets and sonatas, and put our rooms in order, and all this we do requires no great energy, as long as we can apply intelligence. We propagate structure (not just we humans but we who are alive). We disturb the tendency toward equilibrium. It would be absurd to attempt a thermodynamic accounting for such processes, but it is not absurd to say we are reducing entropy, piece by piece. Bit by bit. The original demon, discerning one molecules at a time, distinguishing fast from slow, and operating his little gateway, is sometimes described as "superintelligent," but compared to a real organism it is an idiot savant. Not only do living things lessen the disorder in their environments; they are in themselves, their skeletons and their flesh, vesicles and membranes, shells and carapaces, leaves and blossoms, circulatory systems and metabolic pathways - miracles of pattern and structure. It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in the universe."
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maxwell
entropy
information
organization
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James Gleick |
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15f7b37
|
"(about organizing books in his home library, and putting a book in the "Arts and Lit non-fiction section) I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey." --
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libraries
home
organization
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Nick Hornby |
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9288d8c
|
"You mean we're going chronological order within each author?" he gasped. "But no one even knows for sure when Shakespeare wrote his plays!" "Well," I blustered, "we know he wrote Romeo and Juliet before The Tempest. I'd like to see that reflected on our shelves." George says that was one of the few times he has seriously contemplated divorce." --
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marriage
organization
|
Anne Fadiman |
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be00c13
|
Once out of the mailroom, I began to learn more about fear. As soon as fear begins to ascend, anatomically, from the pit of the stomach to the throat and brain, from fear of violence to the more nameless kind, you come to believe you are part of a horrible experiment. I learned to distrust those superiors who encouraged independent thinking. When you gave it to them, they returned it in the form of terror, for they knew that ideas, only that, could hasten their obsolescence. Management asked for new ideas all the time; memos circulated down the echelons, requesting bold and challenging concepts. But I learned that new ideas could finish you unless you wrapped them in a plastic bag. I learned that most of the secretaries were more intelligent than most of the executives and that the executive secretaries were to be feared more than anyone. I learned what closed doors meant and that friendship was not negotiable currency and how important it was to lie even when there was no need to lie. Words and meanings were at odds. Words did not say what was being said nor even its reverse. I learned to speak a new language and soon mastered the special elements of that tongue.
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fiction
organization
|
Don DeLillo |
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245e968
|
I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.
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|
libraries
cataloging
organization
|
Nick Hornby |
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2276172
|
To grow interested in any piece of information, we need somewhere to 'put' it, which means some way of connecting it to an issue we already now how to care about.
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|
categorization
information
interest
organization
|
Alain de Botton |
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8857673
|
Because the tribe is its members, the tribe is what its members want it to be--nothing more and nothing less.
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|
systems
organization
|
Daniel Quinn |
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13cd9b1
|
"The Balinese don't wait and see "how things go." That would be terrifying. They organize how things go, in order to keep things from falling apart."
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|
organization
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
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2b79b09
|
A compact organization lets all of us spend our time managing the business rather than managing each other.
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|
leadership
organization
|
Roger Lowenstein |
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1f18182
|
"It's easy to assume that we "should" undertake a particular clutter-clearing task. When we're very clear about why we're doing it, it's easier to use our time and energy productively--and also to recognize success."
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|
organization
|
Gretchen Rubin |
|
0a70aa9
|
Leading means running fast enough to keep ahead of your people
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|
leadership
self-esteem
organization
|
S.M. Stirling |
|
7037fa6
|
what passed for useful information sharing within an organization was really just bureaucratic phatic of people protecting their position, looking for praise, projecting criticism, setting up positions of non-responsibility for upcoming failures and calamities, that were both entirely predictable, but seemingly completely unavoidable and telling each other what they all already knew. The trick was to be able to reengage quickly and seamlessly without allowing anyone to know that you stopped listening properly, shortly after the speaker had first opened their mouth.
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|
work
culture-quotes
iain-m-banks
surface-detail
the-culture
bureaucracy
quotes
organization
|
Iain M. Banks |