Edward Tufte Quotes

Stop setting goals. Goals are pure fantasy unless you have a specific plan to achieve them.

As a mayor, my instinct is to really think about how to get something done and not to make the promise unless you have some view of the pathway. You don't have to have it all figured out, but you have to have a pathway there.

We made certain that there were decent transitional arrangements to get us to where we wanted to go. The same principle will have to apply here or we won't get there.

Priorities are the yearly goals that I'm most interested in achieving, then they become operationalized through weekly goals.

The more specific and measurable your goal, the more quickly you will be able to identify, locate, create, and implement the use of the necessary resources for its achievement.

But with lots of good ideas, implementation is the key, and so we need to keep our eye on the ball as we go forward and make sure that people honor their pledges in terms of financial commitments, and that we actually use this money so that it makes a real difference.

A policy needs a clear goal.

Vision without execution is hallucination.

Without execution, 'vision' is just another word for hallucination.

It is one thing to conceive a good plan, and another to execute it

Execution gets divided into two key questions: 1) can you figure out what to do and 2) can you get it done.

Goals and objectives are based on theories and foundations.

Once you articulate an agenda, you have to follow it.

Leadership is working with goals and vision; management is working with objectives.

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Ideas are cheap. The difficult part is finding the team to execute them.

I felt a sense of fulfillment that an action plan, which I'd laid on the table on the 2nd of February 1990, had been fulfilled, had been properly implemented within the time frame which I envisaged.

Great leaders state out loud what they intend to do and in doing so, they get things done.

Intellectuals are good at seeing the big picture. But they are not so good at process.

It is easy to say that something should be done. However to say what, when and how is more difficult.

There's a big difference between saying you are for something and saying how you're going to achieve it.

A lot of the ideas for solving many of our problems are already in place, but ideas don’t travel.

You have to have an idea of what you need to do, what needs to be fixed, what can be improved, what we should now imagine together which we didn't previously imagine. And having thought of it, decide to go it. And that's the government's role.

Leaders tend to focus on 'what to do,' but the real issue is more often 'how to do it.'

I'm all in favour of grand important speeches, but the president then has to link his sermons to a strategy.