THE THOUGHTS OF UNCLE AL, IX

  1. A kite rises against, not with, the wind.
  2. If you plan to leave your mark in the sands of time, wear work shoes.
  3. It's not the principle of the thing, it's the money.
  4. It's foolish to work up a head of steam unless you know what's cooking.
  5. It takes a very little advantage to have a decisive effect.
  6. A president of a democracy is a man who is always ready, willing, and able to lay down your life for his country.
  7. If there are no courts there are no crimes.
  8. Democracy is that form of government where everybody gets what the majority deserves.
  9. Freedom is living with the consequences of your decisions.
  10. Civilization: Who is the boss, what are the rules, and who is going to enforce them.
  11. A pessimist is an optimist with experience.
  12. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.
  13. Humor plays close to the big, hot fire that is Truth.
  14. One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night.
  15. The first suggestion rarely works, but it gets the ball rolling.
  16. Even logic must give way to physics.
  17. Forming an alliance may make you stronger, but it also means that you inherit your new ally's enemies.
  18. Trust is good; control is better.
  19. A mushroom gets trodden upon more frequently than a cactus does.
  20. Anything worth having lies on the far side of a risk.
  21. Professionals are predictable. It's the amateurs who are dangerous.
  22. It takes a certain maturity to plan for decadence.
  23. Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
  24. A leader who gets too far out in front becomes a target.
  25. Paper work is the embalming fluid of bureaucracy, maintaining an appearance of life where none exists.
  26. Adversity causes some men to break, others to break records.
  27. You cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created the problem.
  28. A bureaucrat is a person who cuts red tape lengthwise.
  29. If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest have to drown too?
  30. Automation does not cut red tape - it perforates it.
  31. When one finds himself in a hole of his own making, it is a good time to examine the quality of workmanship - and the reason.
  32. We begin the trip from where we are.
  33. When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.
  34. Minds are what brains do.
  35. As part of the cost-saving effort, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off until further notice.
  36. Don't take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
  37. Sometimes the news is in the noise, sometimes the news is in the silence.
  38. I don't have a solution but I admire the problem.
  39. If you don't see me write it down, we don't have a deal. In fact, it never happened.
  40. Incoming fire has the right of way.
  41. If there are no problems, only opportunities to excel, then what do you call solutions?
  42. Life is short, but it's wide.
  43. A paperless office makes about as much sense as a paperless toilet.
  44. Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
  45. Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
  46. A good lawyer knows the law, a great lawyer knows the judge.
  47. There are eight different ways to insert a floppy disk into a drive, but only one of them is interesting.
  48. Criticism is not nearly as effective as sabotage.
  49. If you torture the data long enough you can make it confess to anything.
  50. The horse does the work, the cabby gets the tips.
  51. There are three kinds of men: those who learn by reading, the few who learn by observation, and the rest who have to pee on an electric fence for themselves.
  52. Give subordinates the opportunity to buy into the process.
  53. Find the alligator hatchery instead of killing them one by one.
  54. Always drink upstream from the herd.
  55. Never design anything that takes a craftsman to build or an intelligent man to operate.
  56. Problems loom large when men don't.
  57. Diplomacy is the art of letting someone have your way.
  58. Don't bleed. Blood attracts sharks.
  59. Don't play just well enough to beat the other team. Play well enough to beat the refs, too.
  60. First ecstasy, then laundry.
  61. One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.
  62. The world is run by those who show up.

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