Management development providers GNP publish a monthly set of handy 'quotable quotes' for anyone to use in presentations, speeches or training sessions. Arranged into 100 'themes' including vision, change, leadership, teamwork, communication, motivation and innovation. TrainingZONE has arranged to bring you the quotes on a regular basis. This month the theme is "paperwork".
"A memorandum is written not to inform the reader, but to protect the writer."
Dean Acheson, US statesman, lawyer (1893-1971)
"Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof they were busy."
Charles Peters, US editor, author (b.1926)
"Report writing, like motor car driving and lovemaking, is one of those activities that every Englishman thinks he can do well without instruction. The results, of course, are usually abominable."
Tom Margerison, US photographer
"What is written without effort is generally read without pleasure."
Samuel Johnson, British poet, critic, lexicographer (1709-1784)
"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."
Gene Fowler, US journalist, biographer (1890-1960)
"Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, might only take you a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all."
Franklin P Adams, US journalist, poet, radio personality (1881-1960)
And finally, Murphy says:
"If it should exist, it doesn't. If it does exist, it's out of date. Only useless documentation transcends the first two laws."
Previous quotes from the archive
All quotations drawn from '1000 GREAT QUOTATIONS for Business, Management & Training' published by GNP Ltd.
