Russell Ackoff Quotes

#1. 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 ... Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes. - RUSSELL ACKOFF,

Donella H. Meadows

#2. I wasn't fooled. He was avoiding looking at me. "There's nothing to talk about."
"I knew you'd say that. Actually, it was a toss-up between that and 'I don't know what you're talking about.'"
Dimitri sighed.

Richelle Mead

#3. We can only learn from mistakes, by identifying them, determining their source, and correcting them ... people learn more from their own mistakes than from the successes of others.

Russell L. Ackoff

#4. It is the satisfaction we derive from 'going there' in contrast to the satisfaction derived from 'getting there.' Recreation provides 'the pause that refreshes.' It recreates creators.

Russell L. Ackoff

#5. To manage a system effectively, you might focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately.

Russell L. Ackoff

#6. Omnicompetence,' the ability to obtain whatever one wants or needs, is an unattainable but continuously approachable ideal for all mankind - past, present, and future.

Russell L. Ackoff

#7. School will bring you more success than marriage.

Nnedi Okorafor

#8. Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem.

Russell L. Ackoff

#9. When my brother called to inform me, on the morning of May 22, 2003, that our mother Caroline Oates had died suddenly of a stroke, it was a shock from which, in a way, I have yet to recover.

Joyce Carol Oates

#10. In systems thinking, increases in understanding are believed to be obtainable by expanding the systems to be understood, not by reducing them to their elements. Understanding proceeds from the whole to its parts, not from the parts to the whole as knowledge does.

Russell L. Ackoff

#11. It is far better to do the right thing wrong than to do the wrong thing right.

Russell L. Ackoff

#12. In the bar, the jukebox comes on. Molley must be trying to drown out the sounds of raised voices. I move toward her, unable to resist; her eyes are wet, her face flushed, and I can finally look at her, want her, let myself touch her without grief turning everything to ashes in my mouth.

Amie Kaufman

#13. As it becomes longer at No. 1, I feel more and more pressure. Everybody is trying to grab every piece of me.

Yani Tseng

#14. A problem never exists in isolation; it is surrounded by other problems in space and time. The more of the context of a problem that a scientist can comprehend, the greater are his chances of finding a truly adequate solution.

Russell L. Ackoff

#15. Errors of omission, lost opportunities, are generally more critical than errors of commission. Organizations fail or decline more frequently because of what they did not do than because of what they did.

Russell L. Ackoff

#16. I probably misunderstand misunderstanding itself

Kenneth Koch

#17. Old age is when you are not bothered with bad dreams, but with bad reality.

Faina Ranevskaya

#18. It's terrifying to think you can remember things you shouldn't possibly be able to. It's like that childhood fear of having your soul slip from your body in your sleep. The darkness, those black sheets of glass sliding over you, upping the pressure, pushing you through the time and space and story.

Tim Winton

#19. There is so much we can do to save lives on our roads.

Michelle Yeoh

#20. Art inspires, produces an unwillingness to settle for what we have and a desire for something better. It is the product and producer of creative activity, change; it is essential for continuous development.

Russell L. Ackoff

#21. The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become. It is much better to do the right thing wronger than the wrong thing righter. If you do the right thing wrong and correct it, you get better.

Russell L. Ackoff

#22. So much time is currently spent in worrying about the future that the present is allowed to go to hell.

Russell L. Ackoff

#23. The future is better dealt with using assumptions than forecasts.

Russell L. Ackoff

#24. Forgiveness is most Christlike when it is given to the undeserving.

Jim George

#25. The objective of education is learning, not teaching

Russell L. Ackoff

#26. I don't say it was hard, because everybody got it hard, some way.

Greg Iles

#27. Unless people can express themselves well in ordinary English, they don't know what they are talking about.

Russell L. Ackoff

#28. Hard distinctions make bad philosophy.

John McCarthy

#29. Managers who don't know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure.

Russell L. Ackoff

#30. The lower the rank of managers, the more they know about fewer things. The higher the rank of managers, the less they know about many things.

Russell L. Ackoff

#31. Most managers receive much more data (if not information) than they can possibly absorb even if they spend all of their time trying to do so. Hence they already suffer from an information overload.

Russell L. Ackoff

#32. Creativity is the ability to identify self-imposed constraints, remove them, and explore the consequences of their removal.

Russell L. Ackoff

#33. Our ability to solve problem is limited by our conception of what is feasible.

Russell L. Ackoff

#34. Nothing is harder to topple than a fact that supports a deeply held prejudice denied by its holder.

Russell L. Ackoff

#35. Every problem interacts with other problems and is therefore part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of problems ... . I choose to call such a system a mess.

Russell L. Ackoff