Hyman Rickover Quotes

22 quotes in 372 categories

• I do not have regrets. I believe I helped preserve the peace for this country. Why should I regret that? What I accomplished was approved…
• Act as if you are going to live for ever and cast your plans way ahead. You must feel responsible without time limitations, and the…
• It troubles me that we are so easily pressured by purveyors of technology into permitting so-called "progress" to alter our lives without attempting to control…
• Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience. Once implemented they can be easily overturned or subverted through…
• The devil is in the details, and everything we do in the military is a detail.
• Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches.
• All new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom.
• Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still…
• When doing a job — any job — one must feel that he owns it, and act as though he will remain in that job…
• Optimism and stupidity are nearly synonymous.
• What it takes to do a job will not be learned from management courses. It is principally a matter of experience, the proper attitude, and…
• The Devil is in the details, but so is salvation.
• Nothing so sharpens the thought process as writing down one's arguments. Weaknesses overlooked in oral discussion become painfully obvious on the written page.
• More than ambition, more than ability, it is rules that limit contribution; rules are the lowest common denominator of human behavior. They are a substitute…
• I believe it is the duty of each of us to act as if the fate of the world depended on him. Admittedly, one man…
• Human experience shows that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done
• Good ideas and innovations must be driven into existence by courage and patience.
• Trying to make things work in government is sometimes like trying to sew a button on a custard pie.
• A child is being properly educated only when he is learning to become independent of his parents.
• If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.

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