40 Organization Quotes For Inspiration

In a world that constantly beckons us to juggle multiple tasks and manage our time effectively, organization is the key to maintaining balance and achieving success. Whether you’re looking to streamline your daily routine, declutter your workspace, or simply find motivation to stay organized, wise words can often light the way. We’ve curated a collection of the top 40 organization quotes brimming with inspiration. These quotes come from some of the most successful minds across various fields and serve as a beacon for anyone striving to bring more order and efficiency into their lives. Dive in and let these nuggets of wisdom propel you towards a more organized and productive you.

1. “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.” - Ann Dillard

2. “I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time.” - Neil Gaiman

3. “Why do anything unless it is going to be great?” - Peter Block

4. “Organize, don't agonize.” - Nancy Pelosi

5. “Once out of the mailroom, I began to learn more about fear. As soonas fear begins to ascend, anatomically, from the pit of the stomach to thethroat and brain, from fear of violence to the more nameless kind, youcome to believe you are part of a horrible experiment. I learned todistrust those superiors who encouraged independent thinking. When yougave it to them, they returned it in the form of terror, for they knewthat ideas, only that, could hasten their obsolescence. Management askedfor new ideas all the time; memos circulated down the echelons, requestingbold and challenging concepts. But I learned that new ideas could finishyou unless you wrapped them in a plastic bag. I learned that most of thesecretaries were more intelligent than most of the executives and that theexecutive secretaries were to be feared more than anyone. I learned whatclosed doors meant and that friendship was not negotiable currency and howimportant it was to lie even when there was no need to lie. Words andmeanings were at odds. Words did not say what was being said nor even itsreverse. I learned to speak a new language and soon mastered the specialelements of that tongue.” - Don DeLillo

6. “Tools that provide simple ways of creating groups lead to new groups, [...] and not just more groups but more kinds of groups.” - Clay Shirky

7. “We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.” - Clay Shirky

8. “The more people are involved in a given task, the more potential agreements need to be negotiated to do anything, and the greater the transaction costs.” - Clay Shirky

9. “A firm is successful when the costs of directing employee effort are lower than the potential gain from directing.” - Clay Shirky

10. “[B]ecause the minimum costs of being an organization in the first place are relatively high, certain activities may have some value but not enough to make them worth pursuing in any organized way. New social tools are altering this equation by lowering the costs of coordinating group action.” - Clay Shirky

11. “The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming 'gather, then share' into 'share, then gather'.” - Clay Shirky

12. “An organization will tend to grow only when the advantages that can be gotten from directing the work of additional employees are less than the transaction costs of managing them.” - Clay Shirky

13. “For the last hundred years the big organizational question has been whether any given task was best taken on by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market.” - Clay Shirky

14. “Unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.” - Clay Shirky

15. “[F]or any group determined to maintain a set of communal standards some mechanism of enforcement must exist.” - Clay Shirky

16. “[C]ollaborative production is simple: no one person can take credit for what gets created, and the project could not come into being without the participation of many.” - Clay Shirky

17. “Collaboration is not an absolute good.” - Clay Shirky

18. “Information sharing produces shared awareness among the participants, and collaborative production relies on shared creation, but collective action creates shared responsibility, by tying the user's identity to the identity of the group.” - Clay Shirky

19. “Tragedy of the Commons: while each person can agree that all would benefit from common restraint, the incentives of the individuals are arrayed against that outcome.” - Clay Shirky

20. “Mass amateurization of publishing makes mass amateurization of filtering a forced move.” - Clay Shirky

21. “[R]elying on nonfinancial motivations may actually make systems more tolerant of variable participation.” - Clay Shirky

22. “Wikipedia [...] is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation.” - Clay Shirky

23. “The low cost of aggregating information also allowed the formalization of sharing [...].” - Clay Shirky

24. “The point of simple living, for me has got to be:A soft place to landA wide margin of errorRoom to breatheLots of places to find baseline happiness in each and every day” - Leo Babauta

25. “(about organizing books in his home library, and putting a book in the "Arts and Lit non-fiction section)I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.” - Nick Hornby

26. “Indeed, organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority. But a good first step would be to build up a critical mass of those willing to 'come out,' thereby encouraging others to do so. Even if they can't be herded, cats in sufficient numbers can make a lot of noise and they cannot be ignored.” - Richard Dawkins

27. “An idea can only become a reality once it is broken down into organized, actionable elements.” - Scott Belsky

28. “William: "I'm sure we can all pull together, sir."Vetinari: "Oh, I do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.” - Terry Pratchett

29. “Justice is always naive and self-confident; believing that it will immediately win once recognized. That is the reason why the forces of Justice are so poorly organized. On the other hand, the Evil is cynic, sly and fantastically organized. It never ever has the illusion of the ability to stand on its own feet and to win in a fair competition. That is why it is ready to use any kind of means without hesitation. And of course it does - under the banners of the most noble ideas.” - Vladimir Bukovsky

30. “To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.” - George Bernard Shaw

31. “I pulled out box after box, setting them haphazardly around the room. My organization lacked something -- like, say, organization ...” - Richelle Mead

32. “Hanging onto a bad buy will not redeem the purchase.” - Terence Conran

33. “The essence of community, its heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of value; things we do and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place.” - Dee Hock

34. “Got up this morning and could not find my glasses. Finally had to seek assistance. Kate [Winslet] found them inside a flower arrangement.” - Emma Thompson

35. “When everything was laid out before her, she felt safe, loved even. She was always trying to be more organized than she was. She knew it was weird and blamed her mother, with the lists andnotes she’d leave whenever she and Dad went out of town. The labeled dinners in the freezer and the 20 emergency numbers on the phone showed she cared, even when absent, she cared.” - Victoria Kahler

36. “Working together as a team helps build a cohesive organization.” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

37. “Organization is the Devil's work.” - Linda Medley

38. “I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.” - Nick Hornby

39. “If you don't like what you got, why don't you change it? If your world is all screwed up, rearrange it!” - Trooper

40. “Time Progression: Wasting >>Spending >> Managing >> Investing” - Elizabeth Grace Saunders