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Optimism and stupidity are nearly synonymous.

Hyman Rickover

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Hyman Rickover
Age: 86 †
Born: 1900
Born: January 27
Died: 1986
Died: July 8
Admiral
Military Officer
Submariner
Makow Mazowiecki
Hyman George Rickover
Hyman Rickover
Synonymous
Optimism
Nearly
Stupidity
Stupid

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Good ideas and innovations must be driven into existence by courage and patience.
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Human experience shows that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done
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The Devil is in the details, but so is salvation.
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I believe it is the duty of each of us to act as if the fate of the world depended on him. Admittedly, one man by himself cannot do the job. However, one man can make a difference. We must live for the future of the human race, and not for our own comfort or success.
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More than ambition, more than ability, it is rules that limit contribution rules are the lowest common denominator of human behavior. They are a substitute for rational thought.
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As a guide to engineering ethics, I should like to commend to you a liberal adaptation of the injunction contained in the oath of Hippocrates that the professional man do nothing that will harm his client.
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To doubt one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. Don't defend past actions what is right today may be wrong tomorrow. Don't be consistent consistency is the refuge of fools.
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What it takes to do a job will not be learned from management courses. It is principally a matter of experience, the proper attitude, and common sense — none of which can be taught in a classroom... Human experience shows that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done.
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All new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom.
Hyman Rickover
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Any one detail, followed through to its source, will usually reveal the general state of readiness of the whole organization.
Hyman Rickover
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Nothing so sharpens the thought process as writing down one's arguments. Weaknesses overlooked in oral discussion become painfully obvious on the written page.
Hyman Rickover
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Be ever questioning. Ignorance is not bliss. It is oblivion. You don't go to heaven if you die dumb. Become better informed. Lean from others' mistakes. You could not live long enough to make them all yourself.
Hyman Rickover
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Free discussion requires an atmosphere unembarrassed by any suggestion of authority or even respect.
Hyman Rickover
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I have a son. I love my son. I want everything that I do to be so safe that I would be happy to have my son operating it. That's my fundamental rule.
Hyman Rickover
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It is a human inclination to hope things will work out, despite evidence or doubt to the contrary. A successful manager must resist this temptation.
Hyman Rickover
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It troubles me that we are so easily pressured by purveyors of technology into permitting so-called progress to alter our lives without attempting to control it-as if technology were an irrepressible force of nature to which we must meekly submit.
Hyman Rickover
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When the men in Russia foul up, they are dismisses, sometimes losing their necks. But we protect those who fail and press them to the government bosom.
Hyman Rickover
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Those involved with practical reactors, humbled by their experiences, speak less and worry more.
Hyman Rickover
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Knowing more about the public effects his work will have, the engineer ought to consider himself an officer of the court and keep the general interest always in mind.
Hyman Rickover
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A system under which it takes three men to check what one is doing is not control it is systematic strangulation.
Hyman Rickover