1. If you planning for one year, plant rice. If you are planning for ten years plant trees. If you are planning for 100 years plant people.

Anonymous. Indian proverb.

2. Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost?

Bible. Luke, 14:28

3. The success of a project will depend critically upon the effort, care and skill you apply in its initial planning.

Gerald M. Blair (b.1959) U.S. writer. Planning a Project (2000)

4. Central planning didn’t work for Stalin or Mao, and it won’t work for an entrepreneur either.

Michael Bloomberg (b.1942) U.S. entrepreneur, business executive and Mayor of New York. Bloomberg on Bloomberg (co-written with Matthew Winkler; 1997)

5. Managers who extensively plan the future get the timing wrong.

Shona L. Brown (b.1966) Canadian writer. Competing on the Edge (co-written with Kathleen M. Eisenhardt; 1998)

6. Preparation is everything. Noah did not start building the ark when it was raining.

Warren Buffett (b.1930) U.S. entrepreneur and financier. Attrib.

7. You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke (1729-97) British philosopher and politician. Letter to a member of the National Assembly (1791)

8. There was no business plan, no model. It was just guts.

Peter Chernin (b.1953) U.S. chief operating officer of News Corporation, chairman and C.E.O. of the Fox Group. Referring to the planning style of News Corporation. Forbes (June 1998)

9. To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy’s power to frustrate it.

Karl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831) Prussian general and military strategist. On War (1831)

10. Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile.

Stephen Covey (b.1932) U.S. writer and psychologist. First Things First: To Live, To Learn, To Leave a Legacy (1994)

11. In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensible.

Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) U.S. general and president. Quoted I “Krushchev,” Six Crises (Richard Nixon; 1962)

12. Hindsight is good, foresight is better; but second sight is best of all.

Evan Essar (1899-1995) U.S. humorist. Attrib.

13. You need to plan the way a fire department plans: it cannot anticipate where the next fire will ne, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as to any ordinary event.

Andrew S. Grove (b.1936) U.S. entrepreneur, author and chairman of Intel Corporation. Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Ever =y Company and Career (1996), Preface.

14. Although strategic planning is billed as a way of becoming more future oriented, most managers…will admit that their strategic plans reveal more about today’s problems than tomorrow’s opportunities.

Gary Hamel (b.1954) U.S. academic, business writer and consultant. “Strategic Intent,” Harvard Business Review (co-written with C.K. Prahalad; May-June 1989)

15. An Act of God was defined as something which no reasonable man could have expected.

A.P. Herbert (1890-1971) British writer and politician. Uncommon Law (1935)

16. Incomes policy alone as a way to ablate inflation caused by excessive money supply is like trying to stop water coming out of a leak hose without turning off the tap.

Keith Joseph (1918-94) British politician. Speech, Preston, England (September 5, 1974)

17.. I never had a business plan-though I did have the background in makeup artistry-and I simply started finding the labs, developing formulas, putting together a color palette and designing packaging.

Jeanine Lobell (b.1964) U.S. entrepreneur, founder and C.E.O. of Stila Cosmetics. “Jeanine Lobell, A Fresh Face,” www.womenswire.com (Evelyn Sheinkopf; 2000)

18. Today, if someone showed me a five-year plan, I’d toss out the pages detailing Years Three, Four and Five as pure fantasy…Anyone who thinks he or she can evaluate business conditions five years from now, flunks.

Mark McCormack (1930-2003) U.S. entrepreneur, founder and C.E.O. of the International Management Group. Staying Street Smart in the Internet Age: What Hasn’t Changed about the Way We Do Business (2000), Introduction

19. When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not heredity.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) British politician, philosopher and writer. Common Sense (1776)

20.The beginning is the most important part of any work.

Plato (428?-347? B.C.) Greek philosopher. The Republic (370? B.C.), bk. 2, sect. 377

21. Planning is as natural to the process of success as its absence is to the process of failure.

Robin Sieger, British business executive and author. Natural Born Winners (1999)

22. Planning ahead is a matter of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.

Gloria Steinem (b.1934) U.S. entrepreneur, editor and writer. “The Time Factor,” Ms. (March 1980)

23. The general who wins a battle makes many calculations…here the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few to defeat.

Sun Tzu (fl. 500 B.C.) Chinese military theorist. The Art of War (Lionel Giles, tr.; 1910)

24. Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.

Sun Tzu (fl. 500 B.C.) Chinese military theorist. The Art of War (Lionel Giles, tr.; 1910)

25. Even the seemingly “hardest” models and data are frequently based on “soft” assumptions, especially when these concern human affairs.

Alvin Toffler (b.1928) U.S. social commentator. Powershift (1990)

26. If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) Russian revolutionary leader and Marxist theorist. Referring to discussions of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee about the Red Army. My Diary (1930), ch. 36

27. Scenario planning distinguishes itself from other more traditional approaches to strategic planning through its explicit approach towards ambiguity and uncertainty in the strategic question.

Kees Van Der Heijden, Dutch writer and consultant. Scenarios (1996)

28. The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.

Horace Walpole (1717-97) British writer. Letter to Thomas Walpole (February 19, 1785)

29. I can read a lot of plans in 45 minutes. It gets my adrenaline rising. And it helps prepare me for spotting good investment areas.

Ann Winblad (b.1953) U.S. venture capitalist. Wall Street Journal (1999)

30. A lot of companies…find planning more interesting than getting out a salable product.

Ed Wrapp, U.S. academic, Dunn’s Review (September 1980)

31. Planning is good, but not if it excludes the opportunity to be able to take chances when they come up.

Chris Wright (b.1944) British entrepreneur and music promoter. Quoted in The Adventure Capitalists (Jeff Grout and Lynne Curry; 1998)