“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”

“The human being is a very poorly designed machine tool. The human being excels in coordination. He excels in relating perception to action. He works best if the entire human being, muscles, senses, and mind, is engaged in the work.”

“So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.”

“People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete - the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.”

“Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.”

“We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.”