Jason > Jason's Quotes

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.”
― Adrienne Rich

“Those who take orders usually run at half speed, underutilizing their imagination and initiative.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“in a leader-follower structure, the performance of the organization is closely linked to the ability of the leader. As a result, there is a natural tendency to develop personality-driven leadership.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“Empowerment programs appeared to be a reaction to the fact that we had actively disempowered people.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“When the performance of a unit goes down after an officer leaves, it is taken as a sign that he was a good leader, not that he was ineffective in training his people properly.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“People who are treated as followers treat others as followers when it’s their turn to lead.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“Don’t move information to authority, move authority to the information.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“What you want to avoid are the systems whereby senior personnel are determining what junior personnel should be doing.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“If all you need your people to do is follow orders, it isn’t important that they understand what you are trying to accomplish.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“as authority is delegated, technical knowledge at all levels takes on a greater importance. There is an extra burden for technical competence.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“If all you need to do is what you are told, then you don’t need to understand your craft. However, as your ability to make decisions increases, then you need intimate technical knowledge on which to base those decisions.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“control without competence is chaos.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“Taking care of your people does not mean protecting them from the consequences of their own behavior. That’s the path to irresponsibility. What it does mean is giving them every available tool and advantage to achieve their aims in life, beyond the specifics of the job.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“Empowerment does not work without the attributes of competence and clarity.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“You know you have an emancipated team when you no longer need to empower them. Indeed, you no longer have the ability to empower them because they are not relying on you as their source of power.”
― L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

“We can both read the same document, but have a different understanding of it.”
― Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product

“The best solutions come from collaboration between the people with the problems to solve and the people who can solve them.”
― Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product

“Stories get their name not from how they’re supposed to be written, but from how they’re supposed to be used.”
― Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product

“If you’re not getting together to have rich discussions about your stories, then you’re not really using stories.”
― Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product

“the real value of stories isn’t what’s written down on the card. It comes from what we learn when we tell the story.”
― Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product

“When I walk into environments where the walls are clear, or even covered with pleasant artwork — or worst of all, motivational posters — it makes me sad.”
― Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product

“If you’re not cutting away more ideas than you keep, you’re probably not doing discovery work right.”
― Jeff Patton, User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product

“Occasionally, I get a letter from someone who is in “contact” with extraterrestrials. I am invited to “ask them anything.” And so over the years I’ve prepared a little list of questions. The extraterrestrials are very advanced, remember. So I ask things like, “Please provide a short proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem.” Or the Goldbach Conjecture. And then I have to explain what these are, because extraterrestrials will not call it Fermat’s Last Theorem. So I write out the simple equation with the exponents. I never get an answer. On the other hand, if I ask something like “Should we be good?” I almost always get an answer.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“The signal is the truth. The noise is what distracts us from the truth.”
― Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't

“Human beings have an extraordinary capacity to ignore risks that threaten their livelihood, as though this will make them go away.”
― Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't

“After adjusting for inflation, a $10,000 investment made in a home in 1896 would be worth just $10,600 in 1996.”
― Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't

“The more interviews that an expert had done with the press, Tetlock found, the worse his predictions tended to be.”
― Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't

“Hedgehogs who have lots of information construct stories—stories that are neater and tidier than the real world, with protagonists and villains, winners and losers, climaxes and dénouements—and, usually, a happy ending for the home team. The candidate who is down ten points in the polls is going to win, goddamnit, because I know the candidate and I know the voters in her state, and maybe I heard something from her press secretary about how the polls are tightening—and have you seen her latest commercial?”
― Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't