Quotes About Organization

A leader who can't change the culture, is a great technician…

I was free again—that is, rather, I was included again in the well-constructed, infinitely stretching Assyrian rows.

The news I read was so upsetting that it drove all else out of my mind. There was but one short line:   "According to reliable sources, new traces have been discovered of the elusive organization which aims at liberation from the beneficent yoke of the State."   "Liberation?" Amazing, the extent to which criminal instincts persist in human nature.

You guys over there, pair up into groups of three.

Imagined orders are not evil conspiracies or useless mirages. Rather, they are the only way large numbers of humans can cooperate effectively.

Of all human collective activities, the one most difficult to organise is violence.

A single priest often does the work of a hundred soldiers – far more cheaply and effectively.

In illiterate societies people make all calculations and decisions in their heads. In literate societies people are organised into networks, so that each person is only a small step in a huge algorithm, and it is the algorithm as a whole that makes the important decisions. This is the essence of bureaucracy. Think

In illiterate societies people make all calculations and decisions in their heads. In literate societies people are organised into networks, so that each person is only a small step in a huge algorithm, and it is the algorithm as a whole that makes the important decisions.

But once the threshold of 150 individuals is crossed, things can no longer work that way. You cannot run a division with thousands of soldiers the same way you run a platoon. Successful family businesses usually face a crisis when they grow larger and hire more personnel. If they cannot reinvent themselves, they go bust.

As everyone from ancient times till today knows, clerks and accountants think in a non-human fashion. They think like filing cabinets. This is not their fault. If they don't think that way their drawers will all get mixed up and they won't be able to provide the services their government, company or organisation requires.

If you distort reality too much, it will weaken you, and you will not be able to compete against more clear-sighted rivals. On the other hand, you cannot organise masses of people effectively without relying on some fictional myths. So if you stick to unalloyed reality, without mixing any fiction with it, few people will follow you.

Writing and money made it possible to start collecting taxes from hundreds of thousands of people, to organise complex bureaucracies and to establish vast kingdoms.

Hierarchies serve an important function. They enable complete strangers to know how to treat one another without wasting the time and energy needed to become personally acquainted

Imagined orders are not evil conspiracies or useless mirages. Rather, they are the only way large numbers of humans can cooperate effectively. Bear in mind, though, that Hammurabi might have defended his principle of hierarchy using the same logic: 'I know that superiors, commoners and slaves are not inherently different kinds of people. But if we believe that they are, it will enable us to create a stable and prosperous society.

Officials kept writing scrolls, collecting taxes, sending orders and oiling the gears of the pharaonic machine.

Really powerful human organisations – such as pharaonic Egypt, communist China, the European empires and the modern school system – are not necessarily clear-sighted. Much of their power rests on their ability to force their fictional beliefs on a submissive reality.

Free association and holistic thought have given way to compartmentalisation and bureaucracy.

Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.

Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. It robs the revolutionary ranks of compact organization and strict discipline, prevents policies from being carried through and alienates the Party organizations from the masses which the Party leads. It is an extremely bad tendency.

If you don't plan your time, someone else will help you waste it.

When I learned how to plan each day and set specific goals, I became more focused on the things that really make a difference.

The busier you get, the more you get done.

A timeless leader practices the art of voluntary elimination. He knows what activities - physical or mental - must be given up so that an organization becomes more productive. A new organization is born in the womb of the old organization. A new generation of new recruits is forever striving to replace an old generation of employees. It is a war of sorts: a clash of perspectives and worldviews. This kind of war is inevitable. We cannot shy away from it.