How do you achieve excellence?...Stop doing non-excellent stuff!

We must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.

I don't believe in holy writ. Buy fifty books or twenty-five books, take three weeks off, read them and make up your own theory. The fact that you end up literally burning twenty-two out of twenty-five books is beside the point.

Who, precisely, are your Dreamers? Are their Dreams in Technicolor? Do you allow their most Outrageous Dreams to be seen in public?

If you're a leader, your whole reason for living is to help human beings develop - to really develop people and make work a place that's energetic and exciting and a growth opportunity, whether you're running a Housekeeping Department or Google. I mean, this is not rocket science.

Hire disrespectful people.

The 10 or 12 artists I have known really well all my life are at least as competitive as professional athletes. They may express it in slightly different terms, but you look at the Jackson Pollocks et al., and they are as interested in wall space in the galleries as Joe Montana is in the percentage of completed passes. So the notion that symphonic conducting, or stage play, or pure art, is not a competitive business is real bullshit.