Planning Quotes

“I need to stop getting into situations where all my options are potentially bad.”
― Jack Campbell, Dauntless

“All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two

“If you don’t know exactly where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“So many people think that they are not gifted because they don’t have an obvious talent that people can recognize because it doesn’t fall under the creative arts category—writing, dancing, music, acting, art or singing. Sadly, they let their real talents go undeveloped, while they chase after fame. I am grateful for the people with obscure unremarked talents because they make our lives easier---inventors, organizers, planners, peacemakers, communicators, activists, scientists, and so forth. However, there is one gift that trumps all other talents—being an excellent parent. If you can successfully raise a child in this day in age to have integrity then you have left a legacy that future generations will benefit from.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley.
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

(To A Mouse)”
― Robert Burns, Collected Poems of Robert Burns

“Action has meaning only in relationship, and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict. The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

“A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.”
― Joanne Harris, Runemarks

“There was no such thing as luck. Luck was a word idiots used to explain the consequences of their own rashness, and selfishness, and stupidity. More often than not bad luck meant bad plans.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged

“Life is like butter - when things cool down it can be reshaped”
― Alan Sheinwald, Alan Sheinwald is Building a Perfect Home

“The intelligent have plans; the wise have principles.”
― Raheel Farooq

“It's a funny thing, how much time we spend planning our lives. We so convince ourselves of what we want to do, that sometimes we don't see what we're meant to do.”
― Susan Gregg Gilmore, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen

“Fail to plan, plan to fail.”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History

“She must protect herself. There would be no one to do it for her. A plan started to prick up its ears inside her, slowly, but getting stronger.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

“SUNDAY

The day..I planned a lot but actually do nothing.”
― Lovely Goyal, I Love the Way You Love Me

“When you establish a destination by defining what you want, then take physical action by making choices that move you towards that destination, the possibility for success is limitless and arrival at the destination is inevitable.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“Normally, when you challenge the conventional wisdom—that the current economic and political system is the only possible one—the first reaction you are likely to get is a demand for a detailed architectural blueprint of how an alternative system would work, down to the nature of its financial instruments, energy supplies, and policies of sewer maintenance. Next, you are likely to be asked for a detailed program of how this system will be brought into existence. Historically, this is ridiculous. When has social change ever happened according to someone’s blueprint? It’s not as if a small circle of visionaries in Renaissance Florence conceived of something they called “capitalism,” figured out the details of how the stock exchange and factories would someday work, and then put in place a program to bring their visions into reality. In fact, the idea is so absurd we might well ask ourselves how it ever occurred to us to imagine this is how change happens to begin.”
― David Graeber

“You can talk all you want about having a clear purpose and strategy for your life, but ultimately this means nothing if you are not investing the resources you have in a way that is consistent with your strategy. In the end, a strategy is nothing but good intentions unless it's effectively implemented.”
― Clayton M. Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life?

“I wasn't planning to lead, I was standing in the back and then everyone turned around.”
― Avery Hiebert

“Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies' histories] towards success or failure: long-term planning and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.”
― Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

“If you don't have a well-thought out dream, you can start by figuring out where you want to go. If you cannot see yourself fairly or accurately represented in the community you live (from restaurants to department stores to clothing choices to conversations at the dinner table) and nothing there makes you feel awake or alive, I suggest you start doing some research on some other communities.”
― Kelly Cutrone

“We are all a little schizophrenic. Each of us has three different people living inside us every day—who you were, who you are and who you will become. The road to sanity is to recognize those identities, in order to know who you are today.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“You can't go around making plans that have you getting killed as a by-product. Eventually one of them is going to work.”
― Holly Black, Black Heart

“You can neither lie to a neighbourhood park, nor reason with it. 'Artist's conceptions' and persuasive renderings can put pictures of life into proposed neighbourhood parks or park malls, and verbal rationalizations can conjure up users who ought to appreciate them, but in real life only diverse surroundings have the practical power of inducing a natural, continuing flow of life and use.”
― Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof.”
― Shannon Alder

“Failing to plan is planning to fail”
― Alan Lakein

“The majority of people don't want to plan. They want to be free of the responsibility of planning. What they ask for is merely some assurance that they will be decently provided for. The rest is a day-to-day enjoyment of life. That's the explanation for your Father Divines; people naturally flock to anyone they can trust for the necessities of life... They are the backbone of a community--solid, trust-worthy, essential.”
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

“It’s not like I planned it. I never woke up from some rosy dream and said, “Okay, world, today I’m gonna spaz.”
― Shannon Celebi, After Spring Comes

“I'm never going to complain about receiving free early copies of books, because clearly there's nothing to complain about, but it does introduce a rogue element into one's otherwise carefully plotted reading schedule. ...

Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarly deflected from your chosen path. ”
― Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree

“When did having a life become an event you had to schedule?”
― Karen Marie Moning, Spell of the Highlander

“Is then no nook of English ground secure
From rash assault?”
― William Wordsworth