Andy Stanley Quotes

We haven't got a plan so nothing can go wrong!

In retrospect there were failures enough to go around. There were failures before the storm and failures after the storm.

I don't think things through very often - I don't project into the future about how a situation will turn out.

It’s very difficult to come to grips with how we screwed this up, but we screwed this up.

The Chilcot report is damning. It exposes a litany of failures over a long period, including reliance on flawed intelligence assessments, lack of planning and insufficient foresight of obvious consequences. But the report also exposes a chilling lack of rigour and a political culture of deference.

Yesterday when we went over the plan again and again, I never thought about Grandad showing up. Because I'm an idiot, basically--an idiot with poor planning skills. Of course he's here. Where else would he be? Seriously, what else could go wrong?

Any plan where you lose your hat is a bad plan.

More people are ruined by victory, I imagine, than be defeat.

See? My plans don’t all suck. Just most of them.

Rain didn't make things messy. People did that all on their own.

A man had need to fear this most of all that he fears not at all.

One possible reason why things aren't going according to plan is that there never was a plan.

One of the reasons many people don't have what they want is neglect. Neglect starts out as an infection and then develops into a disease.

You learn from the mistakes you make and from the mistakes other people make. The truth is, you don't learn from success; you learn from failure.

Most people, after one success, are so cringingly afraid of doing less well that they rub all the edge off their subsequent work.

People who fail, excel at avoiding opportunity.

Look, I know this seems a little half-assed...' 'No, dude. I'd be thrilled if this plan were half-assed. This is, like, no-assed.' 'You're right. It's the most no-assed thing I've ever done in my life.

The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving toward the grand fallacy.

Success is a poor teacher

Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.

Big part of the challenge to innovation is that people too easily resign themselves to dying.

The individual who is mistake-free is also probably sitting around doing nothing. And that is a very big mistake.

Part of being in a band, being a painter, or starting a nonprofit is that you're going to make horrible mistakes and look like a total idiot, but you're never going to create that thing that really connects with people if you don't fail over and over and over again.

You have to make those mistakes. You have to do the work. You have to fail. I also realized that I should practice what I preach, which is that if you only do get one kick at the can . . . When you go to places like Africa or Asia or the Indian sub-continent, you realize that a lot of the people there don't ever get a kick at the can. There are no "kicks" at the can - you just don't have that shot.

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.