Harry S. Truman Quotes

I don't have that much forward planning about what I want to do next, or in the future.

It is best to lay our plans widely in youth, for then land is cheap, and it is but too easy to contract our views afterward. Youths so laid out, with broad avenues and parks, that they may make handsome and liberal old men! Show me a youth whose mind is like some Washington city of magnificent distances, prepared for the most remotely successful and glorious life after all, when those spaces shall be built over and the idea of the founder be realized. I trust that every New England boy will begin by laying out a Keene Street through his head, eight rods wide.

The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.

The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

Knowlege is of no real value if all you can tell me is what happened yesterday. It is necessary to tell what will happen tomorrow ... you must be willing to stick your neck out.

If progress is to be steady we must have long term guides extending far ahead.

I think we need ideas for the future.

You always look ahead to what you'll do next.

When I plan ahead, I don't just plan what I'm doing tomorrow. I also plan what I'm doing five years from now.

We believe in the wisdom once expressed by the hockey star Wayne Gretzky, who explained his success by saying, 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.'

I wake up every morning and think to myself, 'How far can I push the company forward in the next 24 hours?

Long-term planning is often undervalued by our indefinite short-term world.

My job is to think beyond the immediate.

America, now is not the time for small plans.

I've always had goals, always had visions, always had a plan, always been very strategic.

Any company that cannot imagine the future won't be around to enjoy it.

If your dreams don't scare you, you aren't dreaming big enough.

I do not like the phrase: Never cross a bridge till you come to it. The world is owned by men who cross bridges on their imaginations miles and miles in advance of the procession.

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for never is life so low or so little as when occupied with the present.

A monkey glances up and sees a banana, and that's as far as he looks. A visionary looks up and sees the moon.

The great successful men of the world have used their imagination. They think ahead and create their mental picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building - steadily building.

Work hard. Think big. Listen well.

Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.