Organization Quotes

“I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time.”
― Neil Gaiman

“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.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“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.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“The point of simple living, for me has got to be:

A soft place to land

A wide margin of error

Room to breathe

Lots of places to find baseline happiness in each and every day”
― Leo Babauta

“To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“The way to find a needle in a haystack is to sit down.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night

“Organize, don't agonize.”
― Nancy Pelosi

“Did the men steal the papers?" Reynie asked, fearing her response.
No, because they are fools," Sophie said bitterly. "They demanded to see the papers, and when I did not answer fast enough -- they were very frightening, you see -- they hurt me so that I was not awake. . . . When I opened my eyes they were still trying to find the papers. They did not understand how we organize the library, you see. They were angry and creating a bad mess. . . . The police were coming and the men decided they must leave. I shouted at them as they left: 'It is a free and public library! All you had to do was ask!”
― Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

“An idea can only become a reality once it is broken down into organized, actionable elements.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Why do anything unless it is going to be great?”
― Peter Block

“(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.”
― Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree

“He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars; General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer: For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.”
― William Blake

“Justice is always naive and self-confident; believing that it will immediately win once recognized. That is the reason why the forces of Justice are so poorly organized. On the other hand, the Evil is cynic, sly and fantastically organized. It never ever has the illusion of the ability to stand on its own feet and to win in a fair competition. That is why it is ready to use any kind of means without hesitation. And of course it does - under the banners of the most noble ideas.”
― Vladimir Bukovsky

“At the banquet table of nature, there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. If you can't take anything, you won't get anything, and if you can't hold anything, you won't keep anything. And you can't take anything without organization.”
― A. Philip Randolph

“Got up this morning and could not find my glasses. Finally had to seek assistance. Kate [Winslet] found them inside a flower arrangement.”
― Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film

“I pulled out box after box, setting them haphazardly around the room. My organization lacked something -- like, say, organization ...”
― Richelle Mead, Succubus Dreams

“Your most important “want” should be the one you can control!”
― Shannon L. Alder

“The more people are involved in a given task, the more potential agreements need to be negotiated to do anything, and the greater the transaction costs.”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

“Wikipedia [...] is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation.”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

“I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretence invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“[C]ollaborative production is simple: no one person can take credit for what gets created, and the project could not come into being without the participation of many.”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

“Information sharing produces shared awareness among the participants, and collaborative production relies on shared creation, but collective action creates shared responsibility, by tying the user's identity to the identity of the group.”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

“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.”
― Don DeLillo, Américana

“Tragedy of the Commons: while each person can agree that all would benefit from common restraint, the incentives of the individuals are arrayed against that outcome.”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

“A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

“Collaboration is not an absolute good.”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

“Any system described by a power law [...] has several curious effects. The first is that, by definition, most participants are below average.”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

“[R]elying on nonfinancial motivations may actually make systems more tolerant of variable participation.”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

“[F]or any group determined to maintain a set of communal standards some mechanism of enforcement must exist.”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

“Because Wikipedia is a process, not a product, it replaces guarantees offered by institutions with probabilities supported by process.”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations