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 "meetings".
"Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything."
John Kenneth Galbraith, US economist (b.1908)
"I have noticed that people who are late are often much jollier than the people who have to wait for them."
Edward Verrall Lucas, British author, publisher (1868-1938)
"A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled."
Sir Barnett Cocks, British political author (b.1907)
"Every discussion in a meeting has a diminishing curve of interest. The longer the discussion goes on, the fewer people will be interested in it."
Mark McCormack, US sports agent (b.1930)
"Why do we take notes of meetings that last for hours and call them minutes?"
David Williams, British management author, presenter (b.1950)
"A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing but together can decide nothing can be done."
Fred Allen, US supreme court justice (b.1926)
"What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary."
Richard Harkness, US journalist
Previous quotes from the archive
All quotations drawn from '1000 GREAT QUOTATIONS for Business, Management & Training' published by GNP Ltd.
