Favorite Quotations

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?
-- Vince Lombardi

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
-- Galileo Galilei

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
-- Chinese Proverb

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.
-- Unknown

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
-- Thomas Jefferson, (Attributed)

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
-- George Orwell, "Animal Farm"

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
-- James Thurber (Attributed)

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
-- Thomas Szasz, "The Second Sin"

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

The scientific name for an animal that doesn't either run from or fight its enemies is lunch.
-- Michael Friedman

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
-- Franklin P. Jones

Committee--a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.
-- Fred Allen

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
-- Abraham Lincoln

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
-- Nikita Khrushchev

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the
safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
--Mark Twain

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers

If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.
-- Professor Irwin Corey

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
-- Thomas Jefferson

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey

"It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste."
-Henry Ford

We enter the classroom with a loaded gun each day. We pull the trigger when we open our mouths. We must be careful not to hit our students shooting down their hopes and dreams for the future.
--Joe Martin

Never regret yesterday because it cannot be changed; instead make sure today does not become a regret of tomorrow!

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
-- W. C. Fields

In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.
-- Pliny the Elder

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
-- Peter Drucker

Men have become the tools of their tools.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
-- Carl Jung

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
-- Malcolm Forbes, in Forbes Magazine

Remember: People may not remember what you did for them, or even what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Experience is not what happens to a person, it is what that person does with what happens to them.

Money doesn't bring you happiness, but it enables you to
look for it in more places.

Your conscience may not keep you from doing wrong, but it
sure keeps you from enjoying it.

Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.

The world is full of willing people: some willing to work
and some willing to let them.

Always be ready for the little surprises in life...

Be determined to achieve your goals.


Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock,
perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack
showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it
will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow
that did it, but all that had gone before.
--Jacob A. Riis

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
-- Peter Ustinov

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.
-- Nikita Khrushchev

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
-- Peter Drucker

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
-- William Hazlitt

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.
-- Marshall McLuhan

For every person who wants to teach there are approximately thirty people who don't want to learn--much.
-- W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, And Now All This (1932-Intro)

If at first you don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.
-- Bill Lyon

Men are born with two eyes, but only one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
-- Charles Caleb Colton

When you're through changing, you're through.
-- Bruce Barton

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.
-- Richard Bach

The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
-- Michelangelo Buonarroti

It's not the will to win, but the will to prepare to win that makes the difference.
-- Bear Bryant

The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
-- Franklin P. Jones

Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment."
--Mark Twain

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

Life is full of obstacle illusions.
-- Grant Frazier

The older you get, the better you realize you were.

Dogs have owners...cats have staffs. When I get home in the evening, my dog is happy to see me; my cat acts like I have interrupted her day.

Too often, the "Distance Learning Expert" is like the doctor who comes up with a cure for which there is no disease.

Technology is anything developed after you were born...if you can remember the first time you used it...it's technology.

If a teacher can be completely replaced by a CD, he should be.

We may not get all we want in life...but thank God, we do not get all we deserve.

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them. -- Leo Tolstoy

We are not what we know...but what we are willing to learn.
--Mary Catherine Bateson (Daughter of anthropologist Margaret Mead)

We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
-- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.
-- Mother Teresa

Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

The 50-50 Rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.

If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.

Learn from the mistakes of others...you can never live long enough to make them all yourself
--John Luther

It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

People can have the Model T in any color--so long as it's black.
-- Henry Ford

You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.
-- Wayne Gretzky

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you
please. -Mark Twain

The computer is a great invention. There are just as many
mistakes as ever. But they are nobody's fault. -Anonymous

The world is full of willing people: some willing to work,
the rest willing to let them. -Robert Frost

T E A M : Together Everyone Achieves More

MOTIVATE : Make Organizational Teamwork Important - Value All The Employees

W I N : What's Important Now

This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
-- Abraham Maslow

Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men -- the balance-wheel of the social machinery.
      -- Horace Mann,

Technology makes things possible- People make things happen .
          -Erich Block Director, National Science Foundation (EDUCOM '88)

Foundations of effectiveness leadership
--Chancellor, Dr. Jack Hawkins, Jr., TSU

    • Integrity
    • Competency
    • Perseverance
    • Unselfishness
    • Enthusiasm
    • Vision

It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem.

...leaders are people who are able to express them- selves fully...they know who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to fully deploy their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. They also know what they want, why they want it, and how to communicate what they want to others, in order to gain compensation and support. Finally, they know how to achieve their goals. The key to full self-expression is understanding one's self and the world, and the key to understanding is learning--from one's own life and experience.
-- Warren Bennis

Some days you're the statue, and some days you're the pigeon.

Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.
--Cadet maxim, USMA, West Point, NY

My philosophy always has been that if you're not getting better, you're getting worse. There is no just staying at the same level.
--Larry Dierker Astros Manager

A friend of ours was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked along, he began to see another man in the distance. As he drew nearer, he noticed that the local native kept leaning down, picking something up and throwing it out into the water. Time and again he kept hurling things out into the ocean. As our friend approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach and, one at a time, he was throwing them back into the water. Our friend was puzzled. He approached the man and said, "Good evening, friend. I was wondering what you are doing." "I'm throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it's low tide right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don't throw them back into the sea, they'll die up here from lack of oxygen." "I understand," my friend replied, "but there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You can't possibly get to all of them. There are simply too many. And don't you realize this is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast? Can't you see that you can't possibly make a difference?" The local native smiled, bent down and picked up yet another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea, he replied, "Made a difference to that one!"
--By Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen from Condensed Chicken Soup for the Soul Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Patty Hansen

You can always spot a well informed man - his views are the same as yours.
--Ilka Chase

If today is the first day of the rest of your life, what was yesterday?

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order
             --Alfred North Whitehead

                    (Or as a university 'CIO' said, years before there were CIOs, 'My job is to stir the pot when it gets too quiet and
                     to sit on the lid when it gets to bubbling too much.')

The Roman Rule
        The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the

        one who is doing it.

When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed
that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.
-                                 -Winston Churchill

Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do in order to achieve what they want to achieve.
- -Tom Landry

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you'd better be running.

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn...and change.
- -Carl Rogers

Always remember there are certain people who set their watches by your clock.

Sometimes there is no "right" decision.  There is simply a decision that is less "wrong."

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead
horse, the best strategy is to dismount.  In higher education, however, it seems that we often try other strategies
with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.

3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."

4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.

6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.

7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.

8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.

9. Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment.

10. Change the requirements declaring that "This horse is not dead."

11. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.

12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.

13. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."

14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.

15. Do a CA Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.

16. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.

17. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.

18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.

19. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.

20. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.

21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

If you think the problem is bad now,
      just wait until we've solved it.

                        --Arthur Kasspe

God, grant me
   the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

      the Courage to change the things I can; and

          the Wisdom to know the difference.

 

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing

    that it is not fish they are after.
--Henry David Thoreau

I never think of the future.  It comes soon enough. -Albert Einstein

Think you can, think you can't - either way you're right!

If you can see the obstacles, you've taken your eyes off
  the goal."

A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and
  the value of nothing.

 

Our vision is more obstructed by what we think we know

                than by our lack of knowledge.

             --Kristen Stendahl

If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

Don't anthropomorphize computers. They don't like it.

My basic principle is that
               you don't make decisions because they are easy;

               you don't make them because they are cheap;

               you don't make them because they're popular;

               you make them because they're right.                              
--Theordore Hesburgh, C.S.C.

                                 Former president,

                                 University of Notre Dame

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
                    --H.Berlioz

I think, therefore I am. I think.

       As I ate breakfast one morning, I overheard two oncologists
conversing. One complained bitterly, "You know, Bob, I just don't

understand it. We used the same drugs, the same dosage, the same schedule

and the same entry criteria. Yet I got a 22 percent response rate and you

got a 74 percent. That's unheard of for metastatic cancer. How do you do

it?"

       His colleague replied, "We're both using Etoposide, Platinum,

Oncovin and Hydroxyurea. You call yours EPOH. I tell my patients I'm

giving them HOPE. As dismal as the statistics are, I emphasize that we

have a chance."

--William M. Buchholz, M.D.from Chicken Soup for the Surviving Soul

Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Patty Aubery & Nancy Mitchell, R.N.

After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box.
--Italian Proverb

An expert is a person who avoids small error as he sweeps on to the grand
fallacy.
--Benjamin Stolberg

It is never wise to seek or wish for another's misfortune.
       If malice or envy were tangible and had a shape,

       it would be the shape of a boomerang.

                     --Charley Reese

Budget: A method for going broke methodically.

You can name your salary here-
                              I call mine 'Fred'.

--                     Ziggy

Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Not the sharpest tack on the board.

Not the brightest bulb on the tree.

Just a few sandwiches shy of a picnic.

His belt doesn't go through all the belt loops.

Got into the gene pool while the lifeguard wasn't watching.

A room temperature IQ.

Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thingy to hold them together.

A photographic memory, but the lens cover is glued on.

A prime candidate for natural deselection.

Bright as Alaska in December.

During evolution his ancestors were in the control group.

Fell out of the family tree.

Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn't coming.

Has two brains; one is lost and the other is out looking for it.

He's so dense, light bends around him.

If he were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice a week.

If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean.

It's hard to believe that he beat 100,000 other sperm.

Some drink from the fountain of knowledge, but he just gargled.

Takes him 1.5 hours to watch "60 Minutes".

 

To choose a direction, a leader must first have developed a
   mental image of a possible and desirable future state of the

   organization. This image, which we call a vision, may be as

   vague as a dream or as precise as a goal or mission statement.

   The critical point is that a vision articulates a view of a

   realistic, credible, attractive future for the organization,

   a condition that is better in some important ways than what

   now exists. A vision is a target that beckons.
--                                            Warren Bennis

Remember, the reason the alligator has not changed shape in 65 million
years is that he doesn't have to. He got tenure a long time ago.

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
                -- H. H. Williams

Let us not forget the astute observation of Bart Binning during the
summer, to wit:

==========

Consensus can only be achieved when participants first accept the same

overarching goals and objectives.

To the extent that people do not share the same goals and objectives,
politics is the appropriate model to use for conflict resolution.

=========

Unfortunately, faculty, staff, and administration do not share exactly

the same goals and objectives even within each subgroup (or subculture

if you prefer.) This is why there's so much politics in universities,

and even in small colleges.

                           NOTICE:
    We have not succeeded in solving all your problems.

     The answers we have found only serve to raise a

     whole set of new questions.  In some ways, we feel

     we are as confused as ever, but we believe we are

     confused on a higher level and about more important things.
                        

                          Another Month Ends
                            All Targets Met

                          All Systems Working

                        All Customers Satisfied

                   All Staff Eager and Enthusiastic

                     All Pigs Fed and Ready to fly
                            

The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.

The longer I live the more I realize the
impact of attitude on life. Attitude

to me is more important than facts.

It is more important than the past, than

education, than money, than circumstances,

than failure, than successes, than

what other people think or say or do.

It is more important than appearance,

giftedness or skill.  It will make or

break a company, a church, a home. The

remarkable thing is we have a choice

every day regarding the attitude we

embrace for that day.  We cannot change

our past, we cannot change the fact

that people will act in a certain way.

We cannot change the inevitable. The

only thing we can do is play on the

one string we have, and that is our

attitude.  I am convinced that life

is 10% what happens to me and 90% how

I react to it.  And as it is with you.

We are in charge of our attitude.

--            Charles Swindoll

There is no right way to do wrong.

If people listened to themselves more often, they would talk less.
There is two ways of spreading light:

          to be the candle

       or the mirror that reflects it.

--                         Edith Wharton

Sign on bank: We can loan you enough money to get you completely out of
debt.

                  Time really flies....
                    when you waste it.

      "Can you tell me why so many famous
       Civil War battles were fought on National Park Sites?"

                 The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't
attempted to contact us.
--Bill Watterson

None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it
necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert --

because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A

man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he

is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how

good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of

trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible.

The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of

things become impossible.
--                         From Henry Ford Sr.,

                               _My Life and Work_,  p. 86 (1922)

"If you want your children to be brilliant, tell them fairy tales.  If you
want your children to be very brilliant, tell them even more fairy tales."

--attributed to Albert Einstein

The illiterate of the 21st century
       will not be those who cannot read and write,

       but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

                             --Alvin Toffler

                      Some people suffer in silence
                       louder than others complain.
                                    

A decision is what people make when they can't find anyone to form a
committee.

It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face
in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half

of the world.
--George Dennison Prentice

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who survive;
the 'learned' find themselves fully equipped

to live in a world that no longer exists."

-- Eric Hoffer

We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.
                                                                --Margaret Mead

America has always led by example.  So who among us - will
set the example?  Which of our citizens will lead us - in

this next American century?  Everyone who steps forward

today - to get one addict off drugs, to convince one troubled

teenager not to give up on life, to comfort one AIDS patient,

to help one hungry child.  We have within our reach - the

promise - of a renewed America.  We can find meaning and

reward by serving some higher purpose than ourselves.  A

shining purpose.  The illumination of a thousand points of

light.  And it is expressed - by all who know the irresistible

force of a child's hand, of a friend who stands by you and

stays there, a volunteer's generous gesture, an idea - that

is simply right.  The problems before us - may be different,

but the key to solving them - remains the same.  It is the

individual; the individual who steps forward.  And the state

of our union is the union of each of us, one to the other,

the sum - of our friendships, marriages, families and communities.

We all have something to give.  So, if you can read, find

someone who can't.  If you've got a hammer, find a nail.  If

you're not hungry, not lonely, not in trouble, seek out someone

who is. Join - the community of conscience.  Do - the hard work

of freedom.  And that - will define - the state of our union.
                            --President George Bush,

                                1991 State of the Union Address
Bryan / College Station welcome President and Mrs. Bush today
for the opening of the Bush Presidential Library and declare

BCS  a BFZ (Broccoli Free Zone).  -tftd

When you ask people who painted the Sistine Chapel, what comes to most people's minds, the correct answer is Michelangelo.  But it was Michelangelo plus 13 terrific artists and a crew of 200 that did the Sistine chapel.  So all througlhout history it's been a group, a creative group.
-- Warren Bennis, Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find
the ways in which you yourself have altered.
    --Nelson Mandela [A Long Walk to Freedom]

Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
--Kimberly Johnson

Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent
of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of changing

problems that interact with each other. I call such situations

messes ... managers do not solve problems: they manage messes.
--Ackoff, R. "The Future of Operations Research is Past,

Journal of the Operations Research Society, 1979

 An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but
planning is indispensable."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

-- T.S. Eliot

It is what we learn after we know it all that really counts.

Make a firm decision now...  you can always change it later.

       When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in
       nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful.  Of course

       there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and the like.

       But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident...

       or any sort worth speaking about.  I have seen but one vessel

       in distress in all my years at sea.  I never saw a wreck and

       never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that

       threatened to end in disaster of any sort.

--E. J. Smith, 1907

                                 Captain, RMS Titanic
                           

   
Home             Quotations             Special Interests             Communication             Summary Vita
 
Richard Thomas Bothel
   
 
Updated: