Quotes By Norman Ralph Augustine

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.

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

Simple systems are not feasible because they require infinite testing.

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

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

Regulations grow at the same rate as weeds.

Fools rush in where incumbents fear to tread.

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.

Motivation will almost always beat mere talent.

The optimum committee has no members.

People do not win people fights. Lawyers do.

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

There are no lazy veteran lion hunters.

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.

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

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

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

One cannot legislate problems out of existence. It has been tried.

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

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

The more one produces, the less one gets.

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

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

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

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.

A billion saved is a billion earned.

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

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

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.