Sunday, April 19, 2009

Remembered "quality" quotations

(these were recalled upon re-hearing Anna Russell's brilliant lyric, "Things would be so different if they were not as they are!"):
"Prediction is very difficult... especially about the future."
[attributed to both Niels Bohr - Nobel Prize-winning physicist; and Yogi Berra - NY Yankees Hall-of-Fame catcher]

"Unless things change, they are likely to remain the same."

"There is nothing less productive than making more efficient that which shouldn't be done at all."
[Peter Drucker - quality guru]
A remembered story from Reader's Digest:
A woman was preparing a pot-roast, and cut a bit off the end before putting the roast in the roasting-pan.

Her young daughter asked, "Mommy, why do you cut off the end?"
The woman answered, "Because that's the way my Mom did it!"

Her curiosity aroused, the woman asked her mother, "Why did you cut off the end of the roast before putting it in the pan?"
Her mother replied, "Because that's what MY mom did!"

Now hugely curious, the woman approached Grandma:
"Why did you cut off the end of the roast before putting it in the pan?"
Grandma replied, "Because that's the only way it would fit in the pan!"
The origins of much received wisdom are, I suspect, equally pragmatic... and equally irrelevant!

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