Barbara Kingsolver Quotes
Our plans are small and somewhat absurd.
Kingsolver, Barbara. Small Wonder: Essays. HarperCollins, 2002.
Alexander’s move was a stroke of genius. He wanted to amass a great army but did not have the funds in the royal treasure to pay for it. Instead of squeezing the nobles for more funds, he gave everything away. This signaled a willingness to share the wealth so that the nobles financed the army so that they could amass more with the booty of victory. Perdiccas and a few others refused their shares and committed themselves to Alexander’s “hopes.” See {612208} for Alexander’s mother’s view of his generosity later.
This quotation not only applies to business but also to Government programs and operations as well. Most government administrators, at the insistence of their government state goals and objectives which can be measured. Failure to make the goals of your plan has adverse consequences for the government executive—smaller budget, fewer people, less influence, promotions blocked. So most government as we; as private sector executives negotiate a plan that they can readily meet. But when the do meet the plan, the serious problems of society are still with us. They have failed in the second way. Culturally, that kind of failure is not so regarded by most and even brings praise and rewards. The first kind of failure—missing a plan that really could solve a major problem—is more negative for a person’s position and career in government and the private sector. Yet only by choosing plans that well might be missed, can we really make significant breakthroughs. See {633644} for an earlier, not as sophisticated, quotation on this theme.
At the time Eigen was serving as the CEO of a corporation that ran various programs under contract to the Federal Government. Two decades later, the founder of Facebook, a man whose goals were never set low, had a more sophisticated way of phrasing this principle. See {631133}.
Barbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in the Congo in her early childhood. Kingsolver earned degrees in biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally.
