John Dewey

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." -- Yogi Berra

Noah's Principle: No more prizes for predicting rain. Prizes only for building arks.

"Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color of the sea and
were cheerful and undefeated." -- Santiago in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea

"There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state or principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you and you are he. Then is a teaching, and by no unfriendly chance or bad company can he ever quite lose the benefit."

"The different spirits that animate growth and no-growth companies are apparent to everyone. You can almost feel the difference as you walk around their offices and factories. People at growing companies seem to have more fun. They feel and act as if they are changing the world for the better. They spend long hours at work and truly enjoy it. They get positive feedback every time a new breakthrough product hits the market and every time they plan a new facility to build it. This is much different from what we experience in shrinking companies, where friends and colleagues quite suddenly become 'non-persons' and disappear. Everyone would rather work in an environment where possibilities are more tangible than are limits--where hope matters more than fear."

"I am not against information technology, I'm not against the use of computers. I have already said that this is part of my being a man of my time. The problem is that of knowing who and what will be served if information technology begins to play a large part in Brazilian education.... What is behind this? Quite definitely it is an experience of class. My worry is that the introduction of these more sophisticated means into the educational field will, once more, work in favor of those who have and against those who have not. It is because of this that I say that the criticism is not a technical criticism but a political one."

"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides."

"Patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks the loudest."

"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."

"Audiences will decide within 8 seconds if you are worth listening to in the first place ... Remember the 18-Minute Wall--that's the maximum amount of time people can listen to someone talk ... Great speeches share five key characteristics--strong start, one theme, vivid examples, conversational language and strong ending ... People will want to do business with you if you look and sound like you're having fun in your work ... Beware 'perceptions of time'--pauses feel long, but professional speakers use pauses effectively--and a pause that may seem like an eternity to the speaker will feel normal to the audience ... If you think you have more than one message, make sure the secondary points you want to make serve to amplify your main theme ... The way to find your true voice is to speak from your heart ... The more personal and interesting your story, the greater your service to the audience ... Teach, enlighten, guide, explain--that's what leaders do ... People who speak well will fourish in the years ahead."

"As individuals, knowledge workers are smart people. But their individual effectiveness is amplified when they are also part of a smart organization. As an effective knowledge team, they can often create a sort of synergy where the outcome of the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. These smart teams appear as though all team members are of a common mind that shares information and ideas seamlessly across the membership--a distributed mind."

"Swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs."

"You usually can't win by doing the exact same thing as your competitor, but ten percent better. You need to change the rules to get ahead. Offer something else."

"We have got to find ways for the voice of working people to be heard in making decisions that they often understand better than their bosses. After all, the people who build automobiles frequently have the best ideas about how to make better cars; nurses care deeply about improving health care; and teachers understand the realities of education better than ivory-tower theoreticians who haven't been in a classroom since blackboards turned green."

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