Gerald M. Weinberg: "Consulting is the art of influencing people at their request. People want some sort of change--or fear some sort of change--so they seek consulting, in one form or another." The Secrets of Consulting 0932633013 p. v

W. Edwards Deming: "It is wrong to suppose that if you can't measure it, you can't manage it---A costly myth." The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education p. 35 0262541165

Tom DeMarco: "Strict control is something that matters a lot on relatively useless projects and much less on useful projects." Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?, IEEE Software, June/July 2009, p. 96 PDF

Tim Ottinger: "It's always fun listening when people who deal in logic are dealing with people who deal in perception. I suggest as long as one group does not have respect for the troubles of the other, there is not one team."

Dave Nicolette: "How many Elephant Points are there in the veldt? Let's conduct a poll of the herds. Herd A reports 50,000 kg. Herd B report 84 legs. Herd C reports 92,000 lb. Herd D reports 24 head. Herd E reports 546 elephant sounds per day. Herd F reports elephant skin rgb values of (192, 192, 192). Herd G reports an average height of 11 ft. So, there are 50,000 + 84 + 92,000 + 24 + 546 + 192 + 11 = 142,857 Elephant Points in the veldt. The average herd has 20,408.142857143 Elephant Points. We know this is a useful number because there is a decimal point in it."

Henry van Dyke: "Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."

Samuel Johnson: "Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."

General George S. Patton: "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."

Bobby Ray Miller: "Burro, burrow A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As a journalist you are expected to know the difference." (United Press International Stylebook, 1977, p. 29)

Matt Wynne: "The other nice thing about post-its (or index cards for that matter) that if they stay around too long they show visible signs of ageing - they get tatty corners, smudges from the whiteboard pen and even faded by the sunlight though the window. Try getting that kind of rich feedback from a row in an excel spreadsheet." (posted on real_options_discussion@yahoogroups 2/19/2010)

Mark Twain: "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."

Dale Emery's Law of Estimates: "If you're negotiating it, it ain't an estimate."

Lao Tzu: "The best leader, the people do not notice. When the best leader's work is done, the people say, 'We did it ourselves.'"

George Dinwiddie: "Agile is a series of controlled errors in the sense that walking is a series of controlled falls."

David Schmaltz: "Our plans are inevitably naive. Our faith in them, perverse. We surf the unfolding edge, or we fail to live at all."

Willem van den Ende: "A picture says more than a thousand words. Working software says more than a thousand pictures."

Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit."

W. Edwards Deming: "It is not enough to do your best: you must know what to do, and THEN do your best."

Tim Ottinger: "Comparing to other people will either make you