“Plans are useful in the sense that they're proof that planning has taken place. The planning process forces people to think through the right issues. Bus as for the plans themselves they just don't work on the battle field”

“Many armies fail because they put all their emphasis into creating a plan that becomes useless ten minutes into the battle”

“Use statistics as input not output. Use them to make up your mind on an issue.Don't make up your mind and then go looking for the number to support yourself.”

“As we gain information we are more likely to focus on what we don't know :" Someone who knows the state capitals of 17 of 50 states may be proud of her knowledge. But someone who knows 47 may think of herself as not knowing 3 capitals”

“Feature creep is an innocent process. An engineer looking at a prototype of a remote control might think to herself, “Hey, there’s some extra real estate here on the face of the control. And there’s some extra capacity on the chip. Rather than let it go to waste, what if we give people the ability to toggle between the Julian and Gregorian calendars?”

“Stories should put knowledge into a frame work that is more lifelike.”

“Common sense is the enemy of sticky messages, if I already "get" what you're trying to tell me, why should I be obsessed about remembering it.”