1. The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) German playwright and poet. The Life of Galileo (1939)
2. If you limit a company by its structure or by the people in the company, you will, by definition, limit the full potential of that business. It sounds basic, but a lot of companies don’t follow the idea that the structure should be last and not first.
Michael Dell (b.1965) U.S. chairman and C.E.O. of Dell Computer Corporation. Speech to the Society of American Business Editors and Writers Technology Conference, Dallas. “Maximum Speed: Lessons Learned from Managing Hypergrowth” (September 10, 1998)
3. Bromidic though it may sound, some questions don’t have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn.
Katharine Graham (1917-2001) U.S. newspaper publisher and owner of Washington Post. “The Power That Didn’t Corrupt,” Ms. (Jane Howard; 1974)
4. In some circumstances, a refusal to be defeated is a refusal to be educated.
Margaret Halsey (1910-97) U.S. writer. No Laughing Matter (1977)
5. In vulgar usage, progress has come to mean limitless movement in space and time, accompanied, necessarily by an equally limitless command of energy: culminating in limitless destruction.
Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) U.S. social thinker and writer. The Pentagon of Power (1970)
6. The danger is that people can fall in love with the business they’re in and get mesmerized by it. As a result, they don’t actually see the business.
Allen Sheppard (b.1932) British chairman of Vizual Business Tools and former chairman of Grand Metropolitan. Quoted in The Adventure Capitalists (Jeff Grout and Lynne Banks; 1998)
7. There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.
Robert W. Woodruff (1889-1985) U.S. C.E.O. of Coca-Cola. Sign on Robert Woodruff’s desk.