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Quotations about mess
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy: the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and eminently, the finish of a voyage.
Don’t give me anything else to make a mess of, until I finish making my present mess.
Ashleigh Brilliant (b. 1933) Anglo-American writer, epigramist, cartoonist
Pot-Shots, #6392
Out of the mouths of babes comes a lot of what they should have swallowed.
Franklin P. Jones (1908-1980) American journalist, humorist, public relations executive
(Attributed)
A take-off from the Biblical aphorism, "Out of the mouths of babes comes wisdom" (Ps. 8:2).
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) English writer and churchman
A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738)
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American writer [Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald]
The Great Gatsby, ch. 9 (1925)
When a mess, which is a system of problems, is taken apart, it loses its essential properties and so does each of its parts. The behavior of a mess depends more on how the treatment of its parts interact than how they act independently of each other. A partial solution to a whole system of problems is better than whole solutions of each of its parts taken separately.
Russell L. Ackoff (1919-2009) American organizational theorist, consultant, management scientist
“The future of operational research is past,” The Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol 30 (1979)
Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes. Problems are extracted from messes by analysis. Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes.
Russell L. Ackoff (1919-2009) American organizational theorist, consultant, management scientist
“The future of operational research is past,” The Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol 30, pp.93-104. (1979)
English does not contain a suitable word for “system of problems.” Therefore, I have had to coin one. I choose to call such a system a mess.
Russell L. Ackoff (1919-2009) American organizational theorist, consultant, management scientist
Redesigning the Future (1974)
It’s not the tragedies that kill us. It’s the messes.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) American writer
“The Art of Fiction,” #13, interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)
(Source)
