Great Throughts Treasury

"The government runs the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, so they must know a thing or two about satisfying women."

"The great thing about reading diverse news from the fields of business, health, science, technology, politics, and more is that you automatically see patterns in the world and develop mental hooks upon which you can hang future knowledge."

"The idea is just to bring people downtown... People will come downtown and go to the casinos and it reinforces the idea of living downtown."

"The greenest home is the one you don't build. If you really want to save the Earth, move in with another family and share a house that's already built. Better yet, live in the forest and eat whatever the squirrels don't want."

"The Importance of Strategies ? All companies need a strategy so the employees will know what they don't do."

"The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth."

"The important patterns for success that I?ve noticed over the years. ... Lack of fear of embarrassment, Education (the right kind), Exercise"

"The Joy of Feedback ? Feedback is a business term which refers to the joy of criticizing other people's work. This is one of the few genuine pleasures of the job, and you should milk it for all it's worth."

"The job isn't done until you've blamed someone for the parts that went wrong."

"The main difference between marketing and fraud is that criminals have to pay for their own alcohol."

"The longer you work here, diverse it gets."

"The marketing department uses many advanced techniques to match products and buyers in a way that maximizes profits. For example, they give away keychains."

"The most important form of selfishness involves spending time on your fitness, eating right, pursuing your career, and still spending quality time with your family and friends."

"The maintenance man is moving the thermostat in our office today. I started talking with him about the Thermostat Wars [from Dilbert comics]. He told me about one office with 30 women where they could never get the temperature to an agreeable level. At his suggestion they installed 20 dummy thermostats around the office. Everyone was told that each thermostat controlled the zone around itself."

"The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get."

"The new security surveillance system is cutting into the profits of my stationary supply business."

"The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management."

"The Nigerian Email Scam ? As you probably learned in high school, the entire GNP of Nigeria is based on revenue generated from email scams."

"The part that interests me is that society is organized in such a way that the natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal while the natural instincts of women are mostly legal and acceptable. In other words, men are born as round pegs in a society full of square holes. Whose fault is that? Do you blame the baby who didn't ask to be born male? Or do you blame the society that brought him into the world, all round-pegged and turgid, and said, "Here's your square hole"? The way society is organized at the moment, we have no choice but to blame men for bad behavior. If we allowed men to act like unrestrained horny animals, all hell would break loose. All I'm saying is that society has evolved to keep males in a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness."

"The only risk of failure is promotion."

"The Peter Principle ? In the annual Dilbert Survey to find out what management practices were most annoying to employees, the number-one vote-getter in this highly unscientific survey was "Idiots Promoted to Management." This seemed like a subtle change from the old concept by which capable workers were promoted until they reached their level of incompetence ? best described as the "Peter Principle". Now, apparently, the incompetent workers are promoted directly to management without ever passing through the temporary competence stage. When I entered the workforce in 1979, the Peter Principle described management pretty well. Now I think we'd all like to return to those Golden Years when you had a boss who was once good at something... Back then, we all had hopes of being promoted beyond our levels of competence... We didn't understand it then, but the much underrated Peter Principle always provided us with a boss who understood what we did for a living. Granted, he made consistently bad decisions ? after all, he had no management skills. But at least they were the informed decisions of a seasoned veteran from the trenches... Lately, however, the Peter Principle has given way to the Dilbert Principle. The basic concept of the Dilbert Principle is that the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to places where they can do the least damage: management. This has not proved the winning strategy that you might think."

"The past exists only in your mind, he said. Likewise, the future exists only in your mind because it has not happened."

"The project requirements are forming in my mind... Now they're changing... changing... changing... changing... okay. No, wait... changing... changing... done. Naturally, I won't be sharing any of these thoughts with Engineering." "I budgeted for some goons to beat it out of you.""

"The primary purpose of schools is to prepare kids for success in adulthood. That?s why it seems odd to me that schools don?t have required courses on the systems and practices of successful people."

"The process of concentrating on the goal every day greatly increases the likelihood of noticing an opportunity in the environment. The coincidence will create the illusion that writing down the goal causes the environment to produce opportunities. But in reality the only thing that changes is the person?s ability to notice the opportunities."

"The reality is that everyone is a basket case on the inside. Some people just hide it better."

"The simplest explanation usually sounds right and is far more convincing than any complicated explanation could hope to be."

"The source of all unhappiness is other people. As soon as you learn to think of other people as noisy furniture, the sooner you will be happy."

"The rest of the universe is like the coin. The events of the past appear to cause the present, but every time we pop back into existence we are subject to a new set of probabilities."

"The surest way to identify those who won?t succeed at weight loss is that they tend to say things like My goal is to lose ten pounds. Weight targets often work in the short run. But if you need willpower to keep the weight off, you?re doomed in the long run. The only way to succeed in the long run is by using a system that bypasses your need for willpower."

"The spokespeople for tobacco companies always look half dead. The Surgeon General should make them put their pictures on every pack."

"The world isn't fair, but as long as it's tilting in my direction I find that there's a natural cap to my righteous indignation."

"The Viking System ? Weasels can only thrive in civilized societies where there are laws against slaying people because you think they deserve it. That's why, for example, you never hear stories involving elderly Viking weasels. Weasels don't last that long under the Viking system."

"The Weasel's Motto: "To err is human. To cover it up is weasel.""

"The systems-driven people have found a way to look at the familiar in new and more useful ways. ... To put it bluntly, goals are for losers."

"There are two essential rules to management. One, the customer is always right; and two, they must be punished for their arrogance."

"There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives."

"There are always deadlines I have to meet. I don't let myself get too close to the deadlines, so it's not like I'm just sweating bullets or anything if the clock is ticking. I never let myself get in that situation."

"Theory of Evolution (Summary): First, there were some amoebas. Deviant amoebas adapted better to the environment, thus becoming monkeys. Then came Total Quality Management."

"There are many methods for predicting the future. For example, you can read horoscopes, tea leaves, tarot cards, or crystal balls. Collectively, these methods are known as nutty methods. Or you can put well-researched facts into sophisticated computer models, more commonly referred to as a complete waste of time."

"There are 6 billion people on Earth. I like to think they all like my cartoons. If anyone has names of people who don't, please send them to me, and I will have my goons visit them immediately."

"There is no idea so bad that it cannot be made to look brilliant with the proper application of fonts and color."

"There is no idea so good it can't be ruined by a few well-placed idiots."

"There are no attractive women in engineering." "What are you talking about? Look at me!" "I can no longer see your physical beauty Alice. It's...ah... overwhelmed by your professional competence.""

"There is more information in one thimble of reality than can be understood by a galaxy of human brains. It is beyond the human brain to understand the world and its environment, so the brain compensates by creating simplified illusions that act as a replacement for understanding."

"There?s nothing more humbling than seeing your best quotes in a list, and thinking they could have been written by a coma patient with a keyboard and spasms."

"There's a fine line between participation and mockery."

"There's a reason that executives lie. The alternative is worse !"

"There's a gigantic gray area between good moral behavior and outright felonious activities. I call that the Weasel Zone and it's where most of life happens. In the Weasel Zone everything is misleading, but not exactly a lie. There's a subtle difference. When you lie, you hope to fool someone. But when you're being a weasel, everyone is aware that you're a manipulative, scheming, misleading sociopath. For example, no one believes a salesperson who says there are no hidden costs. And no one believes a lawyer who says, "Have a nice day." You know that none of that is sincere. And they know that you know, so in a way, it's a form of honesty ? a weasel form."

"There is no in between; your life is either random or predetermined."