Quotes about plans

Man proposes, but God disposes.

I try to plan, in your sense of the word, but that isn't my basic mode, really. I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans.

It is undoubtedly a grand conspiracy, but not a very clever one. And as with any complicated scheme, there are more ways for it to go wrong than right.

The plans of men do not necessarily coincide with those of the Universe.

Our backup plan is everyone does this right the first time so we don’t need a backup plan. Understood?

All worked excellently, until fighting began.

The effect exerted by paper plans on the unfolding of events must never be exaggerated. Plans do not determine outcomes. The happenings set in motion by a particular scheme of action will rarely be those narrowly intended, are intrinsically unpredictable and will ramify far beyond the anticipation of the instigator. So it was to prove with the Schlieffen plan.

Plans made without allowance for the intentions of the enemy are liable to miscarry. So it was to prove in 1916.

“The likelihood seems farfetched.”

“So have several of the situations in which we have found ourselves in the recent past,” I said.

“But you are resolved to avoid those kinds of situations in the future.”

I made a gesture ripe with fatalism. “I have come to understand that the universe accords my resolutions a good deal less consideration than I would prefer.”

“I have a plan.”

“What kind of plan?”

“A daring and bold one,” he said.

“Is that wise?”

“It has to be that kind of plan. It’s that kind of cosmos.”

What you were preparing against—that never happened! All the best-laid plans could not prevent the disaster against which no plans had been laid.

It was the sort of overly complex plan dreamed up by armchair manipulators who thought they could play chess with the universe and didn’t realize that the universe ignored rulebooks.