Henry Mintzberg Quotes

We use the word 'organization' to mean both the state of being organized and the groups that do the organizing.

Ideas are one thing and what happens is another.

A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.

What you sees, is what you gets.

It is not as difficult as I thought it was, but it is harder than it is.

Something will turn up.

We think that computer models represent reality especially if we developed the models.

Theories and grand ideas are important, but they seldom unfold as planned.

Just because you make a good plan, doesn't mean that's what's gonna happen.

Everything can look good in theory and in practice it all falls apart.

Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it; it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for.

Things just seem so much better in theory than in practice.

If you talk about it, it's a dream, if you envision it, it's possible, but if you schedule it, it's real.

A problem only exists if there is a difference between what is actually happening and what you desire to be happening.

Friendship is the ideal; friends are the reality; reality always remains far apart from the ideal.

All the things she planned to feel, the way she planned to look and seem, the appropriate things she planned to say. None of them came to pass.

What you may seek and what you may find are not always one.

Pain is the difference between what is and what I want it to be.

The discrepancy between what was expected and what has been observed has grown over the years, and we're straining harder and harder to fill the gap.

The script is what you've dreamed up - this is what it should be. The film is what you end up with.

Success is predictable.

The successful leader must plan his work and work his plan.

Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God and what came was the Church.

"Nothing ever happens like you imagine it will," she says. The sky is like a monochromatic contemporary painting, drawing me in with its illusion of depth, pulling me up. "Yeah, that's true," I say. But then after I think about it for a second, I add, "But then again, if you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all."

Hope clouds observation.