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Trying to make things work in government is sometimes like trying to sew a button on a custard pie.

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
Government
Sometimes
Trying
Work
Make
Custard
Things
Button
Like
Pie
Buttons

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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.
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I have the charisma of the chipmunk. I never have thought I was smart. I thought the people I dealt with were dumb.
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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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How the hell are you supposed to know what God wants you to do with your life, eh?
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Good ideas and innovations must be driven into existence by courage and patience.
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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.
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Optimism and stupidity are nearly synonymous.
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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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The Devil is in the details, but so is salvation.
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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.
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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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Free discussion requires an atmosphere unembarrassed by any suggestion of authority or even respect.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Any one detail, followed through to its source, will usually reveal the general state of readiness of the whole organization.
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Above all, we should bear in mind that our liberty is not an end in itself it is a means to win respect for human dignity for all classes of our society.
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Human experience shows that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done
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We bury the men who do the nation's creative work under layers of administrators and mountains of memoranda. We shrivel creativity by endless frustrations.
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A child is being properly educated only when he is learning to become independent of his parents.
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