Gary Bettman Quotes

I'm just never getting there. I'm getting round to it. I'm beginning to understand it a bit more.

You shouldn't try to manufacture progress.

A railway station is something that can generate a city.

Here is an old Oriental proverb: *A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.* It is difficult to anticipate just how a situation will develop in every detail until you take a step forward and try out your present equipment. Then, if weaknesses appear, you will have clues as to how to strengthen your resources. No scheme or plan is perfect. Perfection is a process, not an end.

Traffic in Joburg is like the democratic process. Every time you think it's going to get moving and take you somewhere, you hit another jam.

You can't plan for everything or you never get started in the first place.

I started off small and then this was just the great opportunity.

Opportunities may come along for you to convert something - something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it.

I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring. Because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.

It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.

Personally, I've never understood inactivity. Why a person would sit when he could soar, be a spectator when he could play, or atrophy when he could develop...is beyond me!

Never has there been a map, however carefully executed to detail and scale, which has carried its owner over even one inch of ground. Never has there been a parchment of law, however fair, which prevented one crime. Never has there been a scroll, even such as the one I hold, which so much as a penny or produced a single word of acclamation. Action, alone, is the tinder which ignites the map, the parchment, this scroll, my plans, my goals, into a living force. Action is the food and drink which will nourish my success. I will act now.

We cannot afford not to fight for growth and understanding, even when it is painful, as it is bound to be.

Patience stoutly resists pulling up the daisies to see how the roots are doing!

Growth comes from activity, not from intellectual understanding.

I know what I want to do and it makes sense to get going.

Horses have made civilization possible.

Like the railroads that brought us together in the 19th century, these trails will bring us together in the 20th and 21st centuries. (at launch of the National Millennium Trails Program, 1999)

Decide where you are going and how you are to get there. Then make a start from where you now stand.

In developing our industrial strategy for the period ahead, we have the benefit of much experience. Almost everything has been tried at least once

We also wanted to change the story - change the approach to the 21st century on energy, on education, on transportation, on infrastructure, generally, and it laid the groundwork for that. And one of the reasons I'm doing this trip is not only to say what we did worked, but to say we should do more of this.

As is commonly said, ‘to start anything is simple; to develop it and bring it to a successful culmination takes great effort.’

Greyhound Bus Lines motto: "We Stop For Some Damn Thing Every 200 Yards."

I think that there's gonna be a lot of work to do in order to consolidate the transformations that I was interested in.

Just work. Don't wait. Everybody's waiting until they have the perfect idea to start working. Even if you have an inkling of what you want to do, start moving towards it. And it's going to flesh itself out through the process of moving towards the goal. And by the time you get to where you're going to be, it's not going to look anything like it did when you sat on the couch thinking about it. And if you wait until it's perfect in your head before you get of the couch and start working on it, that's never going to happen.