Great Throughts Treasury

"Law Number XXVII: Rank does not intimidate hardware. Neither does the lack of rank."

"Law Number XXVIII: It is better to be the reorganizer than the reorganize."

"Law Number XXX: By the time the people asking the questions are ready for the answers, the people doing the work have lost track of the questions."

"Law Number XXXV: The weaker the data available upon which to base one's conclusion, the greater the precision which should be quoted in order to give the data authenticity."

"Law Number XXXII: Hiring consultants to conduct studies can be an excellent means of turning problems into gold, your problems into their gold."

"Law Number XXXI: The optimum committee has no members."

"Law Number XXXIII: Fools rush in where incumbents fear to tread."

"Law Number XXXIV: The process of competitively selecting contractors to perform work is based on a system of rewards and penalties, all distributed randomly."

"Law Number XXXIX: Never promise to complete any project within six months of the end of the year, in either direction."

"Law Number XXXVIII: The early bird gets the worm. The early worm ... gets eaten."

"Law Number XXXVI: The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion dollar contract is about one millimeter per million dollars. If all the proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would probably be a good idea."

"Law Number XXXVII: Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect. The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much."

"Never promise to complete any project within six months of the end of the year -- in either direction."

"Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect. The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much."

"Part of the problem is the lack of priority U.S. parents place on core education. But there are also problems inherent in our public education system. We simply don?t have enough qualified math and science teachers. Many of those teaching math and science have never taken a university-level course in those subjects."

"People do not win people fights. Lawyers do."

"One often hears the remark "He talks too much." But when did anyone last hear the criticism "He listens too much?""

"Right now the U.S. is not responding to change as we need to. But there is a way forward. Five years ago, I was part of a commission that studied U.S. competitiveness. We issued a report called Rising Above the Gathering Storm, which made some important recommendations and specific actions to implement them. The recommendations were: Improve K-12 science and math education. Invest in long-term basic research. Attract and retain the best and brightest students, scientists and engineers in the U.S. and around the world. Create and sustain incentives for innovation and research investment."

"That?s how we rose to prominence. And that?s where we?re falling behind now. The statistics tell the story. U.S. consumers spend significantly more on potato chips than the U.S. government devotes to energy R&D. In 2009, for the first time, over half of U.S. patents were awarded to non-U.S. companies. China has replaced the U.S. as the world?s number one high-technology exporter. Between 1996 and 1999, 157 new drugs were approved in the U.S. Ten years later, that number had dropped to 74. The World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. #48 in quality of math and science education."

"There are no lazy veteran lion hunters."

"These nations and many others have rightly concluded that the way to win in the world economy is by doing a better job of educating and innovating. And America? We?re losing our edge. Innovation is something we?ve always been good at. Until now, we?ve been the undisputed leaders when it comes to finding new ideas through basic research, translating those ideas into products through world-class engineering, and getting to market first through aggressive entrepreneurship."

"Too often technology is perceived as the problem rather than the solution; as something to be avoided rather than embraced. This is about as logical as my daughter's observing, while our family was driving through an unfamiliar city, "Trying to read a map while driving causes all the traffic lights to turn green.""

"Truly simple systems... require infinite testing."

"The only thing more costly than stretching the schedule of an established project is accelerating it, which is itself the most costly action known to man."

"The average regulation has a life span one-fifth as long as a chimpanzee's and one-tenth as long as a human's -- but four times as long as the officials who created it."

"The more time you spend talking about what you have been doing, the less time you have to spend doing what you have been talking about. Eventually, you spend more and more time talking about less and less until finally you spend all your time talking about nothing."

"The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion dollar contract is about one millimeter per million dollars. If all the proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would probably be a good idea."