Quotes About Perspective

I have put my arm down forever to interrupt the men who want more hair. from the poem Pasadena collected in Own Face (1978)

There are springs in the mind from which others cannot drink.

If good management practice drives the failure of successful firms faced with disruptive technological change, then the usual answers to companies, problems—planning better, working harder, becoming more customer- driven, and taking a longer-term perspective—all exacerbate the problem.

We should always remember that beyond a certain point, hygiene factors such as money, status, compensation, and job security are much more a by-product of being happy with a job rather than the cause of it. Realizing this frees us to focus on the things that really matter.

As such, there is no one-size-fits-all approach that anyone can offer you. The hot water that softens a carrot will harden an egg.

Data has an annoying way of conforming itself to support whatever point of view we want it to support.

When people ask me something, I now rarely answer directly.

There is no one right answer for all circumstances. You have to start by understanding the job the customer is trying to have done.

Thinking about your relationships from the perspective of the job to be done is the best way to understand what's important to the people who mean the most to you. It allows you to develop true empathy.

But as soon as you find yourself focusing on the tangible aspects of your job, you are at risk of becoming like some of my classmates, chasing a mirage. The next pay raise, you think, will be the one that finally makes you happy. It's a hopeless quest.

Often even more perplexing, however, is when these problems arise within the mind of the same person: when the right decision for the long term makes no sense for the short term;

People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole. It's a profound insight—first popularized by legendary Harvard marketing professor Ted Levitt decades ago.1

People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole. It's

Even with good intentions and deep love, we can fundamentally misunderstand each other. We get caught up in the day-to-day chores of our lives. Our communication ends up focusing only on who is doing what. We assume things.

I had thought the destination was what was important, but it turned out it was the journey. It

As I look back on my own life, I recognize that some of the greatest gifts I received from my parents stemmed not from what they did for me—but rather from what they didn't do for me.

You know why the gods made people in different colors? No, why Kate asked. Too boring, everybody looking the same. The gods didn't want us to get bored.

an inevitable truth of life: Not every foodie memory is a good foodie memory).

For we thought all the time that we were passing through time when we really weren't, when we never have. We've just been moving along with time. We said, there's another second gone, there's another minute and another hour and another day, when, as a mater of fact the second or the minute or the hour was never gone. It was the same one all the time. It had just moved along and we have moved with it.

Unconventional," said Jenkins. "What is conventional?" asked Andrew. "Living in a dream? Living for a memory? you must be weary of it." "Not

The once all-important thing had been buried by more than fifty years of other all-important matters.

Beauty doesn't see itself and when it does something is lost.

Belief is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There is nothing more terrifying than those who are certain that what they believe is undeniably true.