Quotes about plans

No plan of battle survives contact with the enemy, and time is the ultimate opponent.

It was a lousy plan, the only thing to commend it being the fact that all the alternatives were worse.

“So why are we bothering?”

“Just in case.”

“Just in case what?”

“Just in case it turns out to be something we should have bothered about. Always try to avoid setting up future opportunities for kicking yourself.”

Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping their outcomes towards success or failure: long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection, we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.

Well, what was life but the difference between what you planned and what you got?

Scott said, “If things had gone the way they were supposed to, we’d have been in Philadelphia a long time ago.”

“Yeah, and if pigs had wings, we’d all carry umbrellas,” Featherstone replied with a snort “When you’ve been through even a little more fighting, kid, you’re going to see that things just don’t go the way they’re supposed to.”

“I’ve met people like him.” Garth nodded sagely. “Men of customary inaction who can be spurred to sporadic excess. Such men often start ill-planned projects that they lack either energy to complete or the wit to abandon.”

The one sure part of every plan is that it will be set awry.

What was scheduled had no connection with what actually happened.

You need to try to do the impossible, to anticipate the unexpected. And when the unexpected happens, you should double the efforts to make order from the disorder it creates in your life. The motto I'm advocating is — Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos. Does that mean that you shouldn't plan? Not at all. You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate fires, so it has to shape a flexible organization that is capable of responding to unpredictable events.

The shortest distance between the points is a time line, a schedule, a map of your time, the itinerary for the rest of your life. Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan.