Jacob K. Javits Quotes

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

As the CEO, I have to take care of the short term, mid term and the long term.

I try and live my life in bite-size chunks.

If you spend too much time wondering what you're going to feel like in year five, you're not going to feel anything in year one.

Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.

The solution of one problem always brings a few more problems to the surface to be solved, which were hidden underneath the theory of transmission.

There is only one conflict, and that’s between short-term and long-term thinking.

If answers to our national problems were [readily] available we would not have to spend all our time talking about them.

No agency … wants an issue on the agenda unless it has an efficient and acceptable solution for it.

It is axiomatic in politics that the earlier one addresses a problem, the more the alternatives and the easier the solutions.

Never send interim reports only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must then either obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.

The best people in this industry [technology] are the people who are trying to solve big problems.

The world is complicated. But does every problem require a complicated solution?

I think long-term, not short-term.

It is the very essence of intelligence to coordinate means with a view to a remote end, and to undertake what it does not feel absolutely sure of carrying out.

I think short-term goals are important. Trying to set a missive for yourself for the entire year can be daunting, and it can feel too easy to fail or fall short of that.

It's important to think big, but you've got to work small.

Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble

... good intentions are not sufficient to solve our problems.

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.

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.

I live for the moment. I'm basically a Buddhist-type person. I'm just here right now, and I don't think about what's going to happen a hundred years from now. I try to concentrate on what's going on right now. But I'm really trying to run this company like it is going to be here a hundred years from now. That's what's important.

Intelligence is just a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not always chosen intelligently.

In real war an officer may have only one chance at succeeding. Consider each problem.

You could be in the United Nations office all night every night and still feel like you were not making a sufficient dent in the world's problems. I think the key is prioritization. But every job presents the tyranny of the inbox, of allowing the urgent to crowd out the important. So we have to have our lodestars.