Gerald Weinberg Quotes

#1. Books are no substitute for experience working with people, so now that you've read this book on leadership, go out and interact with people before you read any more.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#2. I'm a pessimist, but I have many painstakingly applied coats of optimism.

George Meyer

#3. Words are easy to change, but don't accomplish much.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#4. The Fundamental Regulator Paradox ... The task of a regulator is to eliminate variation, but this variation is the ultimate source of information about the quality of its work. Therefore, the better the job a regulator does the less information it gets about how to improve.

Gerald Weinberg

#5. bottom of page 33:
We all want to feel needed, and we also want to be with people who can manage on their own, if needbe.

Sara Eckel

#6. If you don't have questions about a product's risks, then there's no reason to test. If you have at least one such question, then ask: Will these tests cost more to execute than their answers will be worth?

Gerald M. Weinberg

#7. No matter what the problem is, it's a people problem.

Gerald Weinberg

#8. I didn't do the engineering, and I didn't do the math, because I thought I
understood what was going on and I thought I made a good rig. But I was
wrong. I should have done it.

Jamie Hyneman

#9. Be patient, calm, compassionate. Know that existence is fleeting.

Ettore Sottsass

#10. If you are a leader, the people are your work. There is no other work worth doing.* One

Gerald M. Weinberg

#11. What you don't know may not hurt you, but what you don't remember always does.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#12. If you don't care about quality, you can meet any other requirement.

Gerald Weinberg

#13. In the popular image, a problem-solving leader is a solitary genius, but the true leader prefers to produce a success.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#14. Effective leaders often have to act even when they don't understand all possible factors

Gerald M. Weinberg

#15. The best computer programmers never write a new program when they can use an old one for a new job.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#16. If you cannot think of three ways of abusing a tool, you do not understand how to use it. Faithful

Gerald M. Weinberg

#17. Admiring remarks of my team as I track down the latest obscure but in the Project Mercury Monitor System.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#18. In this business, it takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place. The

Gerald M. Weinberg

#19. Within IBM at that time, growing a beard without getting fired was an indisputable mark of technical genius. In

Gerald M. Weinberg

#20. PREFACE PROBLEM: Nobody reads prefaces.
SOLUTION: Call the preface Chapter 1.
NEW PROBLEM CREATED BY SOLUTION: Chapter 1 is boring.
RESOLUTION: Throw away Chapter 1 and call Chapter 2 Chapter 1.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#21. With enough libraries, all content is free.

Jessamyn West

#22. If you are a good leader, Who talks little, They will say, When your work is done, And your aim fulfilled, "We did it ourselves." - Lao Tse

Gerald M. Weinberg

#23. People don't become leaders because they never fail. They become leaders because of the way they respond to failure.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#24. In rising sighs and falling tears.

Joseph Addison

#25. There's never an easy answer to the question "Should we do more testing?" because information can guide risk reduction, but doesn't necessarily do so.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#26. Jane easily shifts among activities - testing for discovery, pinpointing, locating, determining significance, repairing, troubleshooting, and testing to learn. As long as she continues to serve her customers, it doesn't really matter which task she performs at any given time.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#27. Women won't let me stay single and I won't let me stay married.

Errol Flynn

#28. Newton was a genius, but not because of the superior computational power of his brain. Newton's genius was, on the contrary, his ability to simplify, idealize, and streamline the world so that it became, in some measure, tractable to the brains of perfectly ordinary men.

Gerald Weinberg

#29. Sometimes love blinds us, other times it let's us see.

Paulo Coelho

#30. The most powerful symptom of love is a tenderness which becomes at times almost insupportable.

Victor Hugo

#31. Testing gathers information about a product; it does not fix things it finds that are wrong.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#32. Consultancy can be too short; or too long.

Gerald Weinberg

#33. One of the hardest choices for technical stars who become leaders is losing touch with the latest in technology.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#34. When is the 'look out the windshield phase' of driving? Pretty much all driving is looking out the windshield! It's not a phase. Saying 'testing takes too long' is a bit like saying 'safe driving takes too long.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#35. Problem-solving leaders have one thing in common: a faith that there's always a better way.

Gerald M. Weinberg

#36. Leadership is familiar, but not well understood.

Gerald M. Weinberg