Ruth J. Simmons Quotes

Sometimes when things get kind of frantic, it helps to call my husband Steve, because I think he's got a real good sense of where everything's gonna be in a few years.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.

I must analyze, from what I do now, what will be the impact two or three or five years in the future. What is the statement I want to make?

Action is typical of the American style, thought and planning are not; it is considered heresy to state that some problems are not immediately or easily solvable.

I think in terms of 20-year horizons.

Look several months ahead, see where the obstacles lie, and figure out ways to overcome them.

Short-termism is no longer an option. We have to envisage humanitarian action with a medium- and long-term perspective.

I think long-term, not short-term.

Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

It's very difficult to evaluate a leader in a very short-term perspective because to be a leader you must be able to have a long-term perspective. You must be able to carry changes which take many years. And this is why you can really only see whether it has been a good leadership after some years have passed.

However tight things are, you still need to have the big picture at the forefront of your mind.

Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future; impatience acknowledge its relation to the future but ignores its relation to the past; neither the lazy nor the impatient man, that is, accepts the present instant in its full reality and so cannot love his neighbour completely.

Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics.

There is nothing like chess to keep the brain smart, and give it a workout.

The way you see your future determines your thinking today. You're thinking today determines your performance today. Your performance in the today of your life determines your future.

You always overestimate what you can get done in a year and underestimate what you can get done in 10 years.

Chess is the touchstone of intellect.

If the kids get a good grasp of what the main lessons are for chess after two or three years of staying with the game, then you've given them brain food and you've given them a skill that can last them a lifetime.

The wise man guards against the future as if it were the present.

The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions, for life is a kind of chess.

The wiser a man is, it seems to me, the more vividly he can see the future as part of the evolving present. He doesn't break the flow of life, he directs it, hastens it, but preserves its continuity.

See the long view: By all means "plant the corn, milk the cows, and feed the horses" but always keep the eventual "harvest" in mind.

I wonder if you encountered this dictum first spoken by a twentieth-century statesman: "An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.