Norman Ralph Augustine Quotes

Law Number IX: Acronyms and abbreviations should be used to the maximum extent possible to make trivial ideas profound ... Q.E.D.

There are no lazy veteran lion hunters.

Simple systems are not feasible because they require infinite testing.

Soloist are inspiring in Opera and perhaps even in small entreprenurial ventures, but there is no place for them in large corporations.

If a sufficient number of management layers are superimposed on top of each other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance.

Rank does not intimidate hardware. Neither does the lack of rank.

A billion saved is a billion earned.

If you can afford to advertise, you don't need to.

The early bird gets the worm. The early worm... gets eaten.

By the time of the United States Tricentennial, there will be more government workers than there are workers.

Law Number XLIV: Aircraft flight in the 21st century will always be in a westerly direction, preferably supersonic, crossing time zones to provide the additional hours needed to fix the broken electronics.

One of the most feared expressions in modern times is 'The computer is down.'

Law Number XVI: In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.

Simply stated, it is sagacious to eschew obfuscation.

Only by providing leading-edge human capital and knowledge capital can American continue to maintain a high standard of living, including providing national security for its citizens.

Law Number XXIV: The only thing more costly than stretching the schedule of an established project is accelerating it, which is itself the most costly action known to man.

The process of competitively selecting contractors to perform work is based on a system of rewards and penalties, all distributed randomly.

A revised schedule is to business what a new season is to an athlete or a new canvas to an artist.

People do not win people fights. Lawyers do.

All too many consultants, when asked, 'What is 2 and 2?' respond, 'What do you have in mind?'

The more one produces, the less one gets.

One should expect that the expected can be prevented, but the unexpected should have been expected.

People working in the private sector should try to save money. There remains the possibility that it may someday be valuable again.

Law Number L: The average regulation has a life span one-fifth as long as a chimpanzee's and one-tenth as long as a human's, but four times as long as the official's who created it.

Two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered with water. The other third is covered with auditors from headquarters.

Law Number XXXIX: Never promise to complete any project within six months of the end of the year, in either direction.

Law Number XXVIII: It is better to be the reorganizer than the reorganizee.

Law Number XX: In any given year, Congress will appropriate the amount of funding approved the prior year plus three-fourths of whatever change the administration requests, minus 4-percent tax.

Hardware works best when it matters the least.

If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would get twice as much done. If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all the managers would fly off.

Law Number XXXVI: The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion dollar contract is about one millimeter per million dollars. If all the proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would probably be a good idea.

Although most products will soon be too costly to purchase, there will be a thriving market in the sale of books on how to fix them.

The more time you spend talking about what you have been doing, the less time you have to do what you have been talking about. Eventually, you spend more and more time talking about less and less until finally you spend all of your time talking about nothing.

It's easy to get a loan unless you need it.

Law Number V: One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the output. Increasing the number of participants merely reduces the average output.

A hungry dog hunts best. A hungrier dog hunts even better.

Too often technology is perceived as the problem rather than the solution; as something to be avoided rather than embraced. This is about as logical as my daughter's observing, while our family was driving through an unfamiliar city, "Trying to read a map while driving causes all the traffic lights to turn green."

Decreased business base increases overhead. So does increased business base.

Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the second law of thermodynamics; i.e. it always increases.

If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock, not selling advice.

There are many highly successful businesses in the United States. There are also many highly paid executives. The policy is not to intermingle the two.

Most projects start out slowly - and then sort of taper off.

The weaker the data available upon which to base one's conclusion, the greater the precision which should be quoted in order to give the data authenticity.

Motivation will almost always beat mere talent.

The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin with a silk sow. The same is true of money.

Any task can be completed in only one-third more time than is currently estimated.

If today were half as good as tomorrow is supposed to be, it would probably be twice as good as yesterday was.

It is very expensive to achieve high unreliability. It is not uncommon to increase the cost of an item by a factor of ten for each factor of ten degradation accomplished.