Tom Peters Quotes

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.

If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.

There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity

Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator. What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances. An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally. That's why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That's why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam. Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He's an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn't care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it's important, not because he expects you to pay him for it. Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn't matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.

If I read a book that cost me $20 and I get one good idea, I've gotten one of the greatest bargains of all time.

The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.

Underpromise;overdeliver.

Branding is about everything.

Leaders trust their guts. "Intuition" is one of those good words that has gotten a bad rap. For some reason, intuition has become a "soft" notion. Garbage! Intuition is the new physics. It's an Einsteinian, seven-sense, practical way to make tough decisions. Bottom line, circa 2001 to 2010: The crazier the times are, the more important it is for leaders to develop and to trust their intuition.

Unless you walk out into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference in your life are pretty low.

J. M. Barrie, who wrote Peter Pan, said, “We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.

Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence,’ wrote Tom Peters in Thriving on Chaos, ‘only in constant improvement and constant change.

The little people will get even, which is one of a thousand reasons why they are not little people at all. If you're a jerk as a leader, you will be torpedoed. And usually it won't be by your vice presidents; it will be on the loading dock at 3am when no supervisors are around.

Communication is everyone's panacea for everything.

I took in a deep breath, and smoke twisted around my head as I let it slip through my teeth. “Do you know what my favorite show was when I was a little kid?” The look again. “I would have no idea.” “Doctor Who. British sci-fi show.” “I am familiar with it. Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and Matt—“ “No,” I said. “The new show’s great, but I grew up on the old one. The low-budget, rubber monster show with Tom Baker and Peter Davison. I watched it on PBS all the time as a kid.” I looked out at the dark ruins of Hollywood, at the stumbling shadows dotting the streets as far as you could see. The only other living person within half a mile was standing behind me, her eyes boring into my head. “The Doctor didn’t have super-powers or weapons or anything like that. He was just a really smart guy who always tried to do the right thing. To help people, no matter what. That struck me when I was a kid. The idea that no matter how cold and callous and heartless the world seemed, there was somebody out there who just wanted to make life better. Not better for worlds or countries in some vague way. Just better for people trying to live their lives, even if they didn’t know about him.” I turned back to her and tapped my chest. “That’s what this suit’s always been about. Not scaring people like you or Gorgon do. Not some sort of pseudo-sexual roleplay or repressed emotions. I wear this thing, all these bright colors, because I want people to know someone’s trying to make their lives better. I want to give them hope.

A while back, I came across a line attributed to IBM founder Thomas Watson. If you want to achieve excellence, he said, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.

Sir Gerald Moore: I was at dinner last evening, and halfway through the pudding, this four-year-old child came alone, dragging a little toy cart. And on the cart was a fresh turd. Her own, I suppose. The parents just shook their heads and smiled. I've made a big investment in you, Peter. Time and money, and it's not working. Now, I could just shake my head and smile. But in my house, when a turd appears, we throw it out. We dispose of it. We flush it away. We don't put it on the table and call it caviar.

Only those who constantly retool themselves stand a chance of staying employed in the years ahead.

Organizations exist to serve. Period. Leaders live to serve. Period.

I don’t think this kind of thing [satire] has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It’s not even preaching to the converted; it’s titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, ‘We need satire of them, not of us.’ I’m fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the ’30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War.

The mellow bells, soaring and singing in tower and steeple, told of time's flight through an eternity of peace; and Great Tom, tolling his nightly hundred-and-one, called home only the rooks from off Christ Church Meadow.

All books can be indecent books Though recent books are bolder, For filth, I'm glad to say, is in The mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, Everything is lewd. I could tell you things about Peter Pan And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man...

The “Excellence Standard” is not about Grand Outcomes. In Zenlike terms, all we have is today. If the day’s work cannot be assessed as Excellent, then the oceanic overall goal of Excellence has not been advanced. Period.

Fail faster. Succeed sooner.” — David Kelley, founder IDEO

If you are not confused then you are not paying attention.

GIVE THE WORLD A CLEAR PICTURE OF WHO YOU ARE.

The best leaders...almost without exception and at every level, are master users of stories and symbols.

If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” —Mario Andretti, race-car driver

Celebrate what you want to see more of. - Tom Peters

The partition window opened. Panic flooded through him and he twisted in his seat to see Kooi’s wife. She had a gun, pointed through the little window and at his head. ‘We can talk about this,’ Leeson said, swallowing. ‘I can make you a very wealthy woman.’ She said, ‘Put your hands over your ears, Peter, and close your eyes.

Look at the evolution of the price of a kilogram of the drug, as it makes its way from the Andes to Los Angeles. To make that much cocaine, one needs somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 kilograms of dried coca leaves. Based on price data from Colombia obtained by Gallego and Rico, that would cost about $385. Once this is converted into a kilo of cocaine, it can sell in Colombia for $800. According to figures pulled together by Beau Kilmer and Peter Reuter at the RAND Corporation, an American think tank, that same kilo is worth $2,200 by the time it is exported from Colombia, and it has climbed to $14,500 by the time it is imported to the United States. After being transferred to a midlevel dealer, its price climbs to $19,500. Finally, it is sold by street-level dealers for $78,000.10 Even these soaring figures do not quite get across the scale of the markups involved in the cocaine business. At each of these stages, the drug is diluted, as traffickers and dealers “cut” the drug with other substances, to make it go further. Take this into account, and the price of a pure kilogram of cocaine at the retail end is in fact about $122,000.

Management expert Tom Peters gives a perspective on this. He suggests, “Don’t rock the boat. Sink it and start over.” If you desire to be creative and do something really innovative, that’s sometimes what it takes. You must destroy the old to create something new. You cannot allow yourself to be paralyzed by the idea of change.

Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit pon that of professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting-room floor with it. One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow cat came along, purring, eying the teaspoon avariciously, and begging for a taste. Tom said: "Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter." But Peter signified that he did want it. "You better make sure." Peter was sure. "Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't blame anybody but your own self." Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter.

V obyčejném čase, v tom na hodinách, pochopí člověk určité věci. Když nechá čas běžet, pochopí jiné.

The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.

Do you expect to talk to us, Master Musgrave?’ ‘No, Lord Robert, I expect to die,’ said Tom.

The law is designed to help us live. It has no other justification. If it cannot do that, if it operates only theoretically, the law will fail us.” Senator Stevens stares

was a conduit in the start of Peter Duke’s meteoric career, a single, shiny cog.

Suddenly the minister shouted at the top of his voice: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow—SING!—and put your hearts in it!

(Recuerde: Cuando se trata de innovación, el mayor Enemigo somos nosotros mismos y, aterrador-pero-cierto, ¡nuestros éxitos más preciados del pasado!).

«Las dos cosas más poderosas que existen: una palabra amable y un gesto considerado». –Ken Langone, cofundador de Home Depot

¿Qué debemos hacer? ¿Qué debemos dejar de hacer? Por desgracia, esta claridad no tiene permiso en la mayoría de este tipo de llamados a la revisión estratégica).

Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to

La tournée terminée, Tom et Roger pensèrent qu'après le succès de I Shot The Sheriff, ce serait bien de descendre dans les Caraïbes pour continuer sur le thème du reggae. Ils organisèrent un voyage en Jamaïque, où ils jugeaient qu'on pourrait fouiner un peu et puiser dans l'influence roots avant d'enregistrer. Tom croyait fermement au bienfait d'exploiter cette source, et je n'avais rien contre puisque ça voulait dire que Pattie et moi aurions une sorte de lune de miel. Kingston était une ville où il était fantastique de travailler. On entendant de la musique partout où on allait. Tout le monde chantait tout le temps, même les femmes de ménage à l'hotel. Ce rythme me rentrait vraiment dans le sang, mais enregistrer avec les Jamaïcains était une autre paire de manches. Je ne pouvais vraiment pas tenir le rythme de leur consommation de ganja, qui était énorme. Si j'avais essayé de fumer autant ou aussi souvent, je serais tombé dans les pommes ou j'aurais eu des hallucinations. On travaillait aux Dynamic Sound Studios à Kingston. Des gens y entraient et sortaient sans arrêt, tirant sur d'énormes joints en forme de trompette, au point qu'il y avait tant de fumée dans la salle que je ne voyais pas qui était là ou pas. On composait deux chansons avec Peter Tosh qui, affalé sur une chaise, avait l'air inconscient la plupart du temps. Puis, soudain, il se levait et interprétait brillamment son rythme reggae à la pédale wah-wah, le temps d'une piste, puis retombait dans sa transe à la seconde où on s'arrêtait.

Pastor of the Warsaw Baptist Church, Dr. Peters was tall, gaunt, and pale, with a weak damp smile and cold damp palms: shaking his hand was like being forced to grasp the flaccid penis of a hypothermic zombie.

Everything here is a lie," Rose said. "Just because you saw it doesn't mean it really happened." Tom nodded. He was curiously reluctant to take up this hope she offered. If he reached out, it might bite his hand.

One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow cat came along, purring, eyeing the teaspoon avariciously, and begging for a taste. Tom said: "Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter." But Peter signified that he did want it. "You better make sure." Peter was sure. "Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't blame anybody but your own self." Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc. Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the flower-pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment, peering over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter. "Tom, what on earth ails that cat?" "I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy. "Why, I never see anything like it. What did make him act so?

Tom hunts alone. While shunned by all he sees, he grows aware that, in reality, life is lived alone. When with a hen, there’s only an illusion of sharing; a pretence that life’s trials are easier to endure. Even sleep is a barrier that can’t be shared.

I am often asked by would-be entrepreneurs seeking escape from life within huge corporate structures: “How do I build a small firm for myself?” The answer seems obvious: Buy a very large one and just wait. —Paul Ormerod, economist, Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics

There, eastward, within a stone’s throw, stood the twin towers of All Souls, fantastic, unreal as a house of cards, clear-cut in the sunshine, the drenched oval in the quad beneath brilliant as an emerald in the bezel of a ring. Behind them, black and grey, New College frowning like a fortress, with dark wings wheeling about her belfry louvres; and Queen’s with her dome of green copper; and, as the eye turned southward, Magdalen, yellow and slender, the tall lily of towers; the Schools and the battlemented front of University; Merton, square-pinnacled, half-hidden behind the shadowed North side and mounting spire of St. Mary’s. Westward again, Christ Church, vast between Cathedral spire and Tom Tower; Brasenose close at hand; St. Aldate’s and Carfax beyond; spire and tower and quadrangle, all Oxford springing underfoot in living leaf and enduring stone, ringed far off by her bulwark of blue hills.

All human beings are entrepreneurs,” Mr. Yunus states. “When we were in the caves we were all self-employed … finding our food, feeding ourselves. That’s where the human history began … As civilization came we suppressed it. We became labor because [they] stamped us, ‘You are labor.’ We forgot that we are entrepreneurs.

If I learned one thing that day, it was that Peter Bartholomew, Arnulf, even Saint John the Divine had all been wrong. The world did not have to end with ten-horned beasts and dragons, angels and fantastical monsters. The prophets who foretold those things had succumbed to the extravagance of their imaginations, and it had played them false. Nothing on earth could be so terrible as men.

I’ll tell you why, Mr. Pomfret. Because you haven’t the guts to say No when somebody asks you to be a sport. That tom-fool word has got more people in trouble than all the rest of the dictionary put together. If it’s sporting to encourage girls to break rules and drink more than they can carry and get themselves into a mess on your account, then I’d stop being a sport and try being a gentleman.

NOW WHEN THE SHERIFF found that neither law nor guile could overcome Robin Hood, he was much perplexed, and said to himself, "Fool that I am! Had I not told our King of Robin Hood, I would not have gotten myself into such a coil; but now I must either take him captive or have wrath visited upon my head from his most gracious Majesty. I have tried law, and I have tried guile, and I have failed in both; so I will try what

Specialist or Strategist? Isn’t it true that the more you practice, the better you get? Yes, but, and this bears repeating, the intuitive mastery we are striving for is not brilliant skill at predictable tasks. As the late science fiction author, Robert Heinlein, pointed out, specialization is for insects. Humans need the mystifying ability to cope with the unpredictable and ambiguous challenges posed by thinking adversaries in the real world. Since kendo masters practice hard, don’t we need to put in long hours to develop super competence? The answer is absolutely yes. However, sixteen hours at the office doing the same things day after day simply make you a workaholic (and very likely a micromanager); they do not per se confer an intuitive skill useful in competitive situations. Tom Peters suggests that you can spot who is going to do great things by what they do on airplanes. They don’t pull out the laptop and grind spreadsheets. Instead, they “read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the umpteenth time,” or pick up insights on human behavior from the great novelists.

Lasseter and his Pixar team had the first half of the movie ready to screen by November 1993, so they brought it down to Burbank to show to Katzenberg and other Disney executives. Peter Schneider, the head of feature animation, had never been enamored of Katzenberg’s idea of having outsiders make animation for Disney, and he declared it a mess and ordered that production be stopped. Katzenberg agreed. “Why is this so terrible?” he asked a colleague, Tom Schumacher. “Because it’s not their movie anymore,” Schumacher bluntly replied. He later explained, “They were following Katzenberg’s notes,

«Ho letto tutti i tuoi libri» rispose con entusiasmo. «I tuoi romanzi sono stati una specie di in loco parentis per me» aggiunse, scandendo con cura le parole latine. «Quasi dei genitori, insomma» Ci sorridemmo: aveva detto tutto quello che c’era da dire, e l’aveva detto proprio bene. Suo padre sarebbe stato felice dell’uomo che era diventato, nella misura in cui riusciva a concepire la felicità. Io e Tom eravamo cresciuti con il disprezzo per noi stessi, perché ci avevano insegnato che le differenze sessuali erano sbagliate. Ora mi vergogno di aver sperato che Peter non fosse come Tom, né come me. Forse l’augurio migliore per i ragazzi della sua generazione era che venissero su “come noi”, però orgogliosi di ciò che erano.

about it. So he thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit pon that of professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish, but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a crack in the sitting-room floor with it. One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt’s yellow cat came along, purring, eying the teaspoon avariciously, and begging for a taste. Tom said: “Don’t ask for it unless you want it, Peter.” But Peter signified that he did want it. “You better make sure.” Peter was sure. “Now you’ve asked for it, and I’ll give it to you, because there ain’t anything mean about me;

Suggested Reading Nuha al-Radi, Baghdad Diaries Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin Jane Austen, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Pride and Prejudice Saul Bellow, The Dean’s December and More Die of Heartbreak Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes Henry Fielding, Shamela and Tom Jones Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank Henry James, The Ambassadors, Daisy Miller, and Washington Square Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony and The Trial Katherine Kressman Taylor, Address Unknown Herman Melville, The Confidence Man Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading, and Pnin Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs Iraj Pezeshkzad, My Uncle Napoleon Diane Ravitch, The Language Police Julie Salamon, The Net of Dreams Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis Scheherazade, A Thousand and One Nights F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries Joseph Skvorecky, The Engineer of Human Souls Muriel Spark, Loitering with Intent and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Italo Svevo, Confessions of Zeno Peter Taylor, A Summons to Memphis Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups and St. Maybe Mario Vargas Llosa, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter Reading

THE PARTY And at last the police are at the front door, summoned by a neighbor because of the noise, two large cops asking Peter, who had signed the rental agreement, to end the party. Our peace can’t be disturbed, one of the officers states. But when we receive a complaint we act on it. The police on the front stoop wear as their shoulder patch an artist’s palette, since the town likes to think of itself as an art colony, and indeed, Pacific Coast Highway two blocks inland, which serves as the main north-south street, is lined with commercial galleries featuring paintings of the surf by moonlight —like this night, but without anybody on the sand and with a bigger moon. And now Dennis, as at every party once the police arrive at the door, moves through the dancers, the drinkers, the talkers, to confront the uniforms and guns, to object, he says, to their attempt to stop people harmlessly enjoying themselves, and to argue it isn’t even 1 a.m. Then Stuart, as usual, pushes his way to the discussion happening at the door and in his drunken manner tries to justify to the cops Dennis’ attitude, believing he can explain things better to authority, which of course annoys Dennis, and soon those two are disputing with each other, tonight exasperating Peter, whose sole aim is to get the officers to leave before they are provoked enough to demand to enter to check ID or something, and maybe smell the pot and somebody ends up arrested with word getting back to the landlord and having the lease or whatever Peter had signed cancelled, and all staying here evicted. The Stones, or Janis, are on the stereo now, as the police stand firm like time, like death—You have to shut it down—as the dancing inside continues, the dancers forgetting for a moment a low mark on a quiz, or their draft status, or a paper due Monday, or how to end the war in Asia, or some of their poems rejected by a magazine, or the situation in Watts or of Chavez’s farmworkers, or that they wish they had asked Erin rather than Joan to dance. That dancing, that music, the party, even after the cops leave with their warning Don’t make us come back continues, the dancing has lasted for years, decades, across a new century, through the fear of nuclear obliteration, the great fires, fierce rain, Main Beach and Forest Avenue flooded, war after war, love after love, that dancing goes on, the dancing, the party, the night, the dancing

Tom Peters instructs in his customary bravado to “create your own microequivalent of the Nike swoosh.

Toms Shoes CEO Blake Mycoskie harnessed the power of purpose by deciding to give away one pair of shoes to a child in the developing world for every pair sold.

Tom Peters is still reinventing himself.” His most recent book is The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence.

It was at this bleak moment that Tom Sancton wandered through the French Quarter one evening and passed by the open wrought-iron gate of 726 St. Peter Street.

John Bogle wrote the best “business” (LIFE!) book I’ve read in years. The (BRILLIANT!) title: Enough.

Larry Janesky runs it. He’ll dry out your basement. (See his, yes, bestselling book Dry Basement Science.) The

with more bombs being dropped on Malta in two months of 1942 than were dropped on London in a year. It was a time of fear and fatigue and disease, and jubilation when a convoy, bringing its precious cargo of food and ammunition and fuel, did get through. Now there was nothing here apart from the huts to serve as a reminder of those days. The aircraft pens had gone and the runway, which had been like the long handle of a warming pan, had become a road leading to the National Stadium. For me, searching into the past, there was nothing: this is not the Ta’ Qali that Peter Anderson would have seen. But not everything had changed so drastically. Mdina, the old capital of Malta, would be much as he had seen it, and the barracks where he and Tom had lived were still standing, so the young man at Ta’ Qali had said. There were some things I could see, some places I could visit. My spirits rose. I turned the car around and headed back, past the cemetery, to the roundabout; a signpost pointed to Mtarfa. The road was bumpy and full of potholes; it didn’t look as if it was much used nowadays. It wound up and up, between rubble walls which divided the road from the fields on either side. Over the tops of the walls and through gateways and gaps I could see maize growing, and prickly pears, and huge pumpkins drying on the flat

Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.” Those

Kao prvo, tu je osnovna misao teologije oslobođenja. Ona je naišla na odziv na svim kontinentima i može se još pretvoriti u nešto pozitivno. Jezgra je te misli da se kršćanstvo mora ostvariti u čovjekovoj egzistenciji na zemlji. Ono mora čovjeku dati slobodu savjesti, ali mora isto tako naglašavati i čovjekova socijalna prava. Ako ta misao postane jednostrana, pokušat će od kršćanstva stvoriti instrument političkoga preoblikovanja. Iz toga se rodila ideja kako su sve religije zapravo instrumenti kojima se ostvaruje sloboda, mir i očuvanje svijeta, a oni bi se morali opravdati političkim uspjehom i političkim određivanjem cilja. Ta tematika varira ovisno o političkoj situaciji, ali je prisutna na svim kontinentima. Ona se danas čvrsto ukorijenila u Aziji, ali i u Africi. Čak je prodrla i u islamski svijet, gdje se može naići na pokušaje interpretiranja Kurana postavkama teologije oslobođenja. To je ipak samo marginalna pojava, ali je, na primjer, odigrala značajnu ulogu u muslimanskim terorističkim pokretima. Islam je, po toj interpretaciji, zapravo oslobodilački pokret - možda protiv Izraela. U međuvremenu se ideja oslobođenja - ako uopće smijemo slobodu nazvati glavnim obilježjem novojeke duhovnosti i našega stoljeća - snažno združila s feminističkom ideologijom. Žena je potlačeno biće i zato je oslobađanje žene jezgra svake oslobađajuće djelatnosti. Ovdje je političko oslobođenje nadmašeno antropološkim oslobođenjem. Pritom se ne misli samo na oslobađanje od prisila uloge žene, nego na biološku uvjetovanost čovjeka. Razlikuje se biološki fenomen seksualnosti od njegovih povijesnih pojavni oblika, koji se označavaju imenom ''gender''. Revolucija protiv povijesnog oblika seksualnosti vodi do revolucije protiv bioloških predodređenosti. Više se uopće ne smije spominjati ''priroda''. Čovjek se treba moći oblikovati po želji, mora se osloboditi svih predodređenosti svoga bića. On sam čini od sebe ono što želi biti i tek tada postaje ''slobodnim'' i oslobođenim. U pozadini je tog a čovjekova pobuna protiv granica koje se nalaze u njemu samom kao biološkom biću. Riječ je zapravo o pobuni protiv našega Stvoritelja. Čovjek je po tom učenju vlastiti stvoritelj - suvremeni pokušaj čovjeka da bude Bogom ili da bude poput Boga.

Bufetár kedysi pátral po úspešnom spôsobe, ako sa zbaviť dotieravých a otravných zákazníkov. Našiel ho; prestal objednávať tovar. Na všetky otázky odpovedal buď mlčaním, alebo slovom nemáme. Zákazníci postupne prestali do bufetu dochádzať a bufetár si mohol krátievať dlhé chvíle hádzaním šípok do terča, hraním biliardu a maľovaním krajiniek. Nik ho už neobťažoval. Potom však bufetárovi svitla možnosť prevziať bufet do akéhosi prenájmu a situácia sa zmenila. Dovtedy poberal bufetár nízky plat, ani rodinu si nemohol založiť. Náhle sa pred ním otvorila možnosť vysokého zárobku vo vlastnom podniku. Siahol po tejto možnosti, spísal so sklárňou zmluvu a stal sa vlastným pánom. Naobjednával tovar, bufet dal vymaľovať a na steny rozvešal vlastnoručne namaľované vkusné obrazy. Neuvedomil si, že už dávno si všetci odvykli k nemu chodievať a nič na tom nezmenila ani krikľavá reklamná tabuľa nad vchodom. Odvtedy sa bufetár usiluje získať zákazníkov späť a nedarí sa mu to ani pomocou najvyberanejších lahôdok a najjemnejších nápojov, ktoré naobjednával. Bufet zíva prázdnotou a bufetár si musí privyrábať drobnými lúpežnými vraždami v nočnej fabrike.

Nazarbayev found that he and his regime had a certain chemistry with figures from Blair’s strand of Western politics: the Third Way. It was a system that purported to wed the humanity of the left to the dynamism of the markets. Its proponents possessed, as Tony Judt put it following Blair’s election, ‘blissful confidence in the dismantling of centralised public services and social safety nets’. They felt themselves to be part of a new, transnational elite that would harness the miracles of globalisation. Peter Mandelson, Blair’s strategist, announced the end of the left’s anxieties about the hoarding of wealth. ‘We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich,’ he said. (He added, ‘as long as they pay their taxes’, though the caveat was often forgotten, perhaps because they did not.)

Negotiation appeared the only viable short-term strategy, and to treat with the Indians, the Bureau of Indian Affairs called on Tom Fitzpatrick, a former mountain man turned Indian agent.

Paul Bloom is a proponent of the power of reasoning in moral persuasion, arguing that we have direct evidence of the power of reasoning in cases where morality has changed - over time, people have been persuaded to accept gay marriage, for example, or to reject slavery. Reasoning may not be as fast as intuition, as Haidt claims, but it can play a role in where those intuitions come from. Bloom cites an idea Peter Singer describes in his book “The Expanding Circle”. This is that when you decide to make a moral argument - i.e. an argument about what is right or wrong - you must to some extent step outside of yourself and adopt an impartial perspective. If you want to persuade another that you should have more of the share of the food, you need to advance a rule that the other people can agree to. “I should get more because I’m me” won’t persuade anyone, but “I should get more because I did more work, and people who did more work should get more” might. But once you employ an impartial perspective to persuade you lend force to a general rule, which may take on a life of its own. Maybe tomorrow you slack off, so your own rule will work against you. In order to persuade you struck a bargain with the group’s shared understanding of what’s reasonable. Once you’ve done this, Singer argues, you breathe life into the internal logic of argument. The “impartial perspective” develops its own dynamic, driving reason forward quite apart from the external influences of emotion, prejudice and environment. Not only can the arguments you advance come back to bite you, but they might even lead you to conclusions you didn’t expect when you first formulated them.

The management theorist Tom Peters said, "Purpose rarely comes from sitting down and contemplating purpose. Mostly, surely in my case, one accidentally trips over purpose." It's not built in a lab; it develops as a natural by-product of working with thoughtful observation [...].

Everything can and nothing has to.’ - Peter Hauser, Sharkman

If you like this kind of thing, there is a lot of great work out there. Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter is among my recent favorites, as is Tom Sweterlitsch’s The Gone World. Both books provide both a respite from and a way to think about our current times. Plus anything by William Gibson, although Neuromancer is the place to start if you’re new to his work.

Tom Peters’ books are so

monstrous hound.’ The stripling youth stood up and closed with Tom then, and with another huge jolt of surprise he recognized her. No youth come south at Hobbie’s heels, but his own sister-in-law Eve – Eve Graham as was, when they had dallied on the heather fifteen summers since, before she had fallen in love with the slow, shy charm of his big brother, and begun the relationship that had driven Tom himself so far away from home. Eve Musgrave now, his brother John’s new-made widow. Eve’s still grey eyes held his gaze as fathomless as the Kielder water. ‘Don’t you see, Tom?’ she whispered. ‘It was a hound, but a hound such as no man can look on and survive. It was the Barguest, Tom. We know it now for certain, and rumour says he wasn’t the first to die. But he was the first we have found. And so it is certain now. The Barguest is out on the Borders

One exhibition to which Tom Norman became particularly attached was his family of midgets. It consisted of two midgets, billed as man and wife and always brought into town in a specially constructed miniature coach drawn by ponies. In each town on the tour he made a point of closing the show down for a few days so as to allow the lady midget to ‘give birth to her baby’. A new-born infant would then be hired to stand in for the hypothetical offspring, and even larger queues always gathered after such a ‘happy event’ to see the new arrival. The only problem was the difficulty he had in restraining the ‘mother’ from swearing volubly, smoking a pipe and drinking gin in front of the customers. The exhibition finally came to grief when the ‘mother’ ran away one night, objecting to being displayed as a woman any longer, both midgets being men.

Instead of courage' management guru Tom Peters recommends fostering 'a level of fury with the status quo such that one cannot not act.

Adventure doesn’t come to you. You have to chase it down. Are you placing enough interesting, freakish bets? Taking enough chances? Playing the long shots? — Tom Peters and Kansas Stamps    

(Tom Peters: “There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity.”)

Do something,” he told the executive, “even if it’s wrong.” Tom Peters would call Bill’s attitude in this situation a “bias for action,” and his book In Search of Excellence lists it as a top common attribute of the companies

checking their

Successful change can only come in the context of a clear understanding of what may never change, what the organization stands for. This is what Peter Drucker calls the organization’s culture. Culture, as he uses the term, is that which cannot, will not, and must not change. We talk a lot about changing corporate culture, as though it were just another parameter of the organization, like an SIC code or address. But Drucker would have us look at culture entirely differently, as the bedrock upon which any constructive change will have to rest. If nothing is declared unchangeable, then the organization will resist all change. When there is no defining vision, the only way the organization can define itself is its stasis. Like the human creature that fights wildly to resist changing whatever it considers its identity, the corporate organism without vision will hold on to stasis as its only meaningful definition of self.

Santo Bruno, Roberto Caporuscio, Pat DePula, Steve Green, Ruth Gresser, PJ Hamel, Jay Jerrier, Brad Kent, Adam Kuban, Tom “The Dough Doctor” Lehmann, Matt McClellan, Penny Pollack, Shawn Randazzo, Peter Reinhart, Jesse Ryan, and

[T]his revolutionary, multi-disciplinary approach that includes books, art, music and film: all as individual facets of a single polished gemstone of revelation. Some truths -- as Nobel Lauret (and science fiction writer) Doris Lessing reminds us -- can best be expressed in fiction... From the Afterword by Peter Levenda

On a June afternoon in 1791, George Washington, Andrew Ellicott, and Peter Charles L’Enfant rode east from Georgetown “to take,” so Washington recorded in his diary, “a more perfect view of the ground” of the new federal city. From David Burnes’s fields they surveyed the prospect of the Potomac River, and then, continuing east across the Tiber Creek, they climbed to the crest of Jenkins Hill. With the confluence of the Eastern Branch and the Potomac, the cities of Alexandria and Georgetown, and the hills of Maryland and Virginia spread majestically before them, the time had come, the president wrote, “to decide finally on the spots on which to place the public buildings.” From their vantage point on Jenkins Hill, L’Enfant presented his vision of a city worthy of the new republic. He began by siting the two principal buildings: the “Congress House,” as he called it, would command Jenkins Hill, “a pedestal waiting for a superstructure”; the “President’s Palace,” L’Enfant’s name for today’s White House, would rise about a mile away on the land partially belonging to David Burnes. A star of avenues each named for a state would radiate from the center of each house. Pennsylvania Avenue—the name would honor the state’s importance in the nation’s creation—would connect the two buildings. It would be “a direct and large avenue,” 180 feet wide and lined with a double row of trees. These radiating avenues would intersect at circles and squares, to be named for heroes, and they would overlay a grid of streets similar to that of Philadelphia.

the day. His ma’s in the hospital, ye see…skidded on a mat when she was gettin’ her hair done in Hilda Cahoon’s hair saloon and broke her hip. Hilda had tae get the amb’lance, ’cos she couldn’t get herself up.” “Well, I’m sorry to hear that, but—” “Ye could try McMurty in the town but he’d charge ye an arm and a leg, ’cos he’s got bigger overheads than me. He’d do a quicker job for ye, right enuff, but I’d put money on it that it wouldn’t be as good a job as I’d do. I take me time, ye see, on account of havin’ a bit more of it on me hands out here, not bein’ in the town, like.” “Look, I’ll tell you what: I’ll just—” “They’re queuing up for McMurty in the town but that’s only ’cos he’s in the town and not out here in the cawntry like me…I couldn’t guarantee that ye wouldn’t have a wait on yer hands there, too. He could say he’d have it for yeh this evenin’, then ye could go back this evenin’ and he’d tell ye a different story altogether. He’s like that, ye see. And at the end of the day he’d charge ye more, ’cos as I say, he’s got bigger overheads than me…” Bessie realized it was pointless trying to interrupt. She was put in mind of her old refrigerator. It, too, had a habit of droning on in similar fashion. A swift kick in the right spot usually sorted it out. However, in this case such a tactic might prove highly inadvisable. She’d simply have to endure it. Let the mechanic say his piece. He’d peter out eventually. “…but it’s a free cawntry and it’s up tae you. As I say, I’ll do it for ye as soon as Willie-Tom opens the morra…couldn’t say fairer than that. I would of done it for ye today if Willie-Tom’s mother hadn’t skidded on that mat. But a body never knows from one day till the next what’s gonna happen. So it’s up tae you what ye want tae do.” “Look, I’ll just risk it then,” the widow said, not

Tom Watson, though, held his team and himself to a different standard. As he explained to his men in 1930 at the outset of the Depression, “No man deserves any special credit for being an average man. It is the men who are striving to be above the average who are the men who build business—they are the men who build nations.” This belief applied to every person, including himself as the person holding the title of the CEO, because a policy was “a policy for the entire organization; not for just one man.” The average, in his eyes, was “the average” because the “above average” carried the rest. He was determined to be one of the great CEOs who would carry the rest.

Tom Peters, şirketin Hint kültüründen esinlenerek, eş zamanlı olarak “yaratma”, “koruma” ve “yok etme” becerilerine sahip olması gerektiğini söyler. Peters’a göre bu taban tabana zıt gbi görünen üç kuvvet aynı anda çalıştığında son derece yaratıcı ve dinamik bir ortam oluşur. Bir şirkette yenilikçi yöntemlere yer açmalı, bunu yanı sıra şirkete ayak bağı olan anlayışlar da yok edilebilmeli ama değişim adına her şeyi kökten söküp atma yoluna da gidilmemelidir. Eğer bu üçü aynı anda yapılıp şirket içinde sürekli temiz kan akışı sağlanırsa o zaman son derece renkli ve çok sesli bir şirket kültürü yaratılabilir.

Back then, there weren’t channels dedicated to subcategories of the population. There was no Disney channel, no Food Network, no ESPN, no Bravo. There was Sam Donaldson, Peter Jennings, and, my personal crush, Tom Brokaw on the news, and we got cartoons for three hours on Saturday mornings until CBS switched to golf at 11:00 after the Smurfs. Oh sure, MTV hit the scene in 1981, but we couldn’t watch it because of the devil. Apparently we could watch a show starring two outlaw brothers, their half-naked cousin, and a car painted with the Confederate flag but couldn’t watch Madonna sing “Like a Virgin” because we might get secondhand pregnant.

p.35: Tom Peters. En un mundo de cambio rápido y aun explosivo, las compañías tienen que construir una organización comparativamente dinámica que REÚNA A LOS CLIENTES, EMPLEADOS Y SOCIOS ESTRATÉGICOS EN BUSCA DE RELACIONES, PRODUCTOS Y AMBIENTES DE TRABAJO QUE CREEN GRAN ENTUSIASMO, CREATIVIDAD Y SATISFACCIÓN.

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it.

biologist Sir Peter Medawar famously described a virus as ‘a piece of bad news wrapped in protein

El padre detuvo a un integrante del reparto para quejarse por el grosero comportamiento del Capitán Garfio. El integrante del reparto pidió una disculpa y explicó que cuando un Capitán Garfio termina su turno, es reemplazado por otro. Aparentemente, hubo una confusión y el nuevo Capitán Garfio no tomó su lugar con suficiente rapidez. El integrante del reparto preguntó a la familia dónde se hospedaban y dijo que trataría de arreglar las cosas para Nancy. Cuando Nancy regresó a su habitación, había un muñeco de Peter Pan y una nota en la cama. Esta decía: 'Querida Nancy: Lamento mucho que el Capitán Garfio haya sido malo contigo hoy. Algunos días también es malo conmigo. Por favor regresa y visítanos pronto. Tu amigo, Peter Pan'. Nancy estaba entusiasmada: ¡Peter Pan había volado hasta su habitación y le había dejado una nota en la cama!

Perfection’s a process, Peter, not a state. No one’s perfect. What you are is

Perfection’s a process, Peter, not a state. No one’s perfect. What you are is extraordinary.

The standard antidote to one's overactive hostility is to train oneself to defer reaction. As my smart friend Tom Murphy so frequently says, "You can always tell the man off tomorrow if it is such a good idea.

Margaret Thatcher said: ‘Socialism only works until you run out of other people’s money.