Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes

The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them.

First things first, second things never.

Knowing what to take out and what to leave in is what separates the men from the boys.

Pay attention to matters of importance.

The only stupidities that are not easily solved are those created by very intelligent men.

We must be patient if we would act wisely. What we do today may bear fruit long after we are dead, for no good work is ever really lost. The important thing is to get the tendency right. We should think of all these subjects in terms not of brief individual life, but long continued national life.

Any plan is better than no plan.

Appreciating complexity while searching through its thickets to find essential factors leads to understanding.

Parenting is one of the best management training programs there is.

Most people in business and within their personal lives move towards complexity. More To Dos. More projects. More products. More meetings. More possessions. More goals. The best - I suggest to you - move in the opposite direction.

As a teenager, my dad taught me about the idea of unintended consequences, and I've had the experience, and how to deal with it, pounded into my soul over the years.

There's a powerful tendency to overcomplicate the whole notion of leadership.

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

Not everything can be solved quickly.

When you're a manager you always have tunnel vision at certain times.

I really try to ask myself the question of nine. Will this matter in nine minutes, nine hours, nine days, nine weeks, nine months or nine years? If it will truly matter for all of those, pay attention to it.

Every situation, no matter how complex it initially looks, is exceedingly simple.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn't give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

The formation is not the most important thing.

My goal is to simplify complexity.

Focusing is all about saying no

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.

Life-complication Theory: Given a choice between an easy solution and a complicated one, the loser will usually opt to travel the complicated path. Don't ignore a solution just because it's simple!

You can do only one thing at a time. I simply tackle one problem and concentrate all efforts on what I am doing at the moment.

Complexity creates confusion, simplicity focus.