Hi there!
As a Data Governance or Stewardship leader, you do a lot of talking, right? And you'd like to be profound sometimes - or clever, or learned, or at least not tongue-tied... Over the years, Gwen and I have collected quotations in a variety of categories that might come in handy. Enjoy them! - Kumbaya, DDD
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Authority
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
- Albert Einstein
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
- Thomas H. Huxley
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
- Kenneth Blanchard
If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.
- Keith Richards
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
- Leonardo da Vinci
The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.
- Stanley Milgram
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
- Albert Einstein
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
- The Buddha
Being Change
You must be the change you want to see in the world.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
- Albert Einstein
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
- Albert Einstein
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
- Peter Drucker
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
- Albert Einstein <
If you can’t fit theea on the back of an envelope, you’re not ready to talk about it.
- Melville Thomas
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
- Hubert H. Humphrey
Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.
- Robert Greenleaf
It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear. - Dick Cavett
Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.
- Rollo May
I'm sorry this letter is so long, but I did not have time to make it shorter.
- Mark Twain
Conflict
Only through conflict is there growth.
- Melville Thomas
Greateas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.
- Albert Einstein
Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right.
- Marie Ebner von Eschenbach
True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Decision-Making
In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Indecision may or may not be my problem.
- Jimmy Buffett
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
- Albert Einstein
If we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgments.
- Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, 2005
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
- Albert Einstein
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
- Albert Einstein
Describing Truth
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
- Albert Einstein
Differences
Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Diligence
Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more--restful.
- Mark Twain
Diplomacy
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
- Mark Twain's Notebook, 1898
Disorder
The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction and malperformance.
- Peter Drucker
Doing the Work
My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.
- Indira Gandhi
Governance
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
- Albert Camus
Guessing
I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Information
Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.
- Gertrude Stein
As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.
- Benjamin Disraeli
Leadership
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
- Kenneth Blanchard
A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.
- Rosalynn Carter
There's nothing more demoralizing than a leader who can't clearly articulate why we're doing what we're doing.
- James Kouzes and Barry Posner
You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
What you always do before you make a decision is consult. The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it.
- Elizabeth Dole
[Y]ou must unite your constituents around a common cause and connect with them as human beings.
- James Kouzes and Barry Posner
A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice.
- James Callaghan
Most important, leaders can conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts.
- John Gardner
Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach.
- Rosabeth Moss Kantor
Leaders aren't born they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.
- Vince Lombardi
I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.
- Everett Dirksen
The only safe ship in a storm is leadership.
- Faye Wattleton
I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure which is Try to please everybody.
- Herbert B. Swope
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.
- Isaac Newton
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
- John Quincy Adams
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.
- Peter Drucker
Leaders shouldn't attach moral significance to theireas Do that, and you can't compromise.
- Peter F. Drucker
Politics
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
- Plato
Man is by nature a political animal.
- Aristotle
Problems
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
- Albert Einstein
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
- Albert Einstein
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
- Albert Einstein
Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
- Albert Einstein
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
- Carl Sagan
Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static "snapshots." It is a set of general principles -- distilled over the course of the twentieth century, spanning fields as diverse as the physical and social sciences, engineering, and management.... During the last thirty years, these tools have been applied to understand a wide range of corporate, urban, regional, economic, political, ecological, and even psychological systems. And systems thinking is a sensibility -- for the subtle interconnectedness that gives living systems their unique character.
- Peter Senge
Progress
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
- Albert Einstein
Questioning
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
- Albert Einstein
Reaching Agreement
You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
- Indira Gandhi
Should We Do This
Think then act - There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
- Peter F. Drucker "The Father of Modern Management"
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
- Albert Einstein
A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
- Albert Einstein
Success
All great successes are the triumph of persistence
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
- Thomas Alva Edison
I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
Always be smarter than the people who hire you.
- Lena Horne
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