Pragmatic Quotes

“
Pragmatic Marketing
Session will start at 9:00
Men’s maxims reveal their characters.
Marquis de Vauvenargues
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“
Pragmatic Marketing
whimsical \WIM-zih-kul\
adjective: 1. full of, actuated by, or
exhibiting whims; 2. resulting from or
characterized by whim or caprice;
especially lightly fanciful;
3. subject to erratic behavior or
unpredictable change
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Management is doing things right;

leadership is doing the right things.
Peter Drucker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It’s not that problems are invisible;

it’s that no one is looking for them.
Steve Johnson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When was the last time you bought your

company’s product?
Craig Stull, Phil Myers, David Meerman Scott

Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities
That Lead to Business Breakthroughs
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No one ever
listened
himself out of a job.
Mahatma Gandhi
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Simplification is one of the most difficult

things to do.
Jonathan Ive
head of industrial design at Apple
Designer of iPod and iMac
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The great thing about fact-based

decisions is that they overrule the
hierarchy.
Jeff Bezos, Founder, Amazon.com
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It’s easier to find products for people you

know than it is to find people for products
you know.
Steve Johnson
Pragmatic Marketing
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The revenue-driven organization worries

about individual sales opportunities one at
a time, rather than what resonates with a
large marketplace.

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“
Pragmatic Marketing
Our plan is to invent some sort of

doohickey that everyone wants to buy.
A “visionary” in a Dilbert cartoon strip
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Common sense is not so common.
Voltaire
“
Pragmatic Marketing
factotum
\fak-TOH-tuhm\
noun: a person having many diverse
activities or responsibilities
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I will not expose the

ignorance of the faculty.
Bart Simpson
(writing 100 times on the blackboard as punishment)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
cognoscente \kahn-yuh-SHEN-tee\
noun: a person who has expert
knowledge in a subject.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Learning how to think is more important

than what you know.
Rishad Tobaccowala,
President, Giant Step
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No matter what happens, somebody will

find a way to take it too seriously.
Dave Barry
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I quote others only to

better express myself.
Michel de Montaigne
“
Pragmatic Marketing
One original thought is worth a thousand

mindless quotings.
Diogenes
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“
Pragmatic Marketing
How we spend our days is, of course,

how we spend our lives.
Annie Dillard
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nature has given to men one tongue, but

two ears, that we may hear from others
twice as much as we speak.
Epictetus, Greek philosopher
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I used to think that the problem with

American business was a lack of focus.
Now I realize that it’s a lack of courage.
Jim Foxworthy
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Omphaloskepsis
\ahm-fuh-loh-SKEP-sis\
noun: contemplation of one's navel as an
aid to meditation
[Called “innovation” in some companies]
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I've also learned that only through
focus can you do world-class things,

no matter how capable you are.
Bill Gates
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of

sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t
get it.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The kind of humor I like is the thing that

makes me laugh for five seconds and
think for ten minutes.
William Davis
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not

ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.
Daniel J Boorstin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I may have said the same thing before but

my explanation, I am sure, will always be
different.
Oscar Wilde
The Strategic Role of
Product Management
A briefing for executives

which outlines the strategic
role of product management
in a technology company.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Blessed is the man who,

having nothing to say, abstains from
giving us worthy evidence of the fact.
George Eliot
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People don’t ask for facts in making up

their minds. They would rather have one
good, soul-satisfying emotion than a
dozen facts.
Robert Keith Leavitt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I think every person should be able to

enjoy life. Try to decide what you most
enjoy doing, and then look around to see
if there is a job for which you could
prepare yourself that would enable you to
continue having this sort of joy.
Linus Pauling, scientist

Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, California
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Look and you will find it.

What is unsought will go undetected.
Sophocles
“
Pragmatic Marketing
factoid \'fak-'toid\ noun

1. an invented fact believed to be true
because of its appearance in print; 2. a
brief and usually trivial news item.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I ain’t got time to stand around here and

discuss trivial trivialities.
Barney Fife (Don Knotts),

The Andy Griffith Show
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Octothorp \AHK-tuh-thorp\
noun: the symbol #
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never trust anyone you don’t understand.
Jack Trout
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What we are trying to do

in marketing is not
to change minds, but to
take advantage of the perceptions
that are already there.
Ries and Trout

Bottom-Up Marketing
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“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you look for the good in people

expecting to find it, you surely will.
Abraham Lincoln
“
Pragmatic Marketing
During my service in the United States

Congress, I took the initiative in creating
the Internet.
Al Gore
March 9, 1999
“
Pragmatic Marketing
He who builds to every man’s advice will

have a crooked house.
Danish proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The only thing to do with

good advice is pass it on.
It is never any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Build software so that it needs a short

user’s manual.
C.A.R. Hoare
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Complexity is not be admired.

It is to be avoided.
Jack Trout
The Power of Simplicity
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Eschew obfuscation.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Simple = good
Luke Sullivan
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Please bring your vehicle to a

speed not exceeding zero
miles per hour at this
Stop
coordinate in space and time
as there is other vehicular
traffic moving in a direction
perpendicular to your own and
may intersect with your
vehicle’s current trajectory.
Which is better?
Practical Product Management
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“
Pragmatic Marketing
The only art is to omit.
Robert Louis Stevenson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.
Henry David Thoreau
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never answer a letter

when you’re angry.
Chinese proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Did you know…

pressing ‘b’ during a PowerPoint
presentation will pause the presentation
and change the screen to black. Press it
again to resume.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Build momentum by accumulating small

successes.
Anonymous
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion

without the discomfort of thought.
John F. Kennedy
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You can’t build a reputation on

what you are going to do.
Henry Ford
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The Internet is a reliable system

comprised of loosely connected and
imperfect parts that works because
nobody is in control.
Wired Magazine
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Help stamp out and eradicate superfluous

redundancy.
Did you know?
The typical product manager

has responsibility for 3
products. How many do you
have?
PragmaticMarketing.com/survey

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“
Pragmatic Marketing
9 out of 10 products are introduced to fill a

void in the company’s product line, not to
fill a void in the market.
Al Ries and Jack Trout

Bottom-up Marketing
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Any sufficiently advanced technology is

indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The greatest ability in business is to get

along with others and influence their
actions.
John Hancock
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Plan to throw one away;

you will anyway.
Winston Joyce
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Fix requirement errors early.

To fix later, they will cost:
* 500% more at design stage
* 1,000% more at coding
* 2,000% more at unit test
* 20,000% more at delivery
Barry Boehm
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Attitude is contagious.
Is yours worth catching?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A positive attitude may not

solve all your problems,
but it will annoy enough people
to make it worth the effort.
Herm Albright
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Whenever I think of the past, it brings

back so many memories...
Steven Wright
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Those who cannot remember the past are

condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
Requirements That Work™
Follow a straightforward
method for creating product
plans that developers will
embrace.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Executive ability is deciding quickly and

getting somebody else to do the work.
John G. Pollard
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Who begins too much

accomplishes little.
German proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Avoid design in requirements.
Alan M. Davis
201 Principles of Software Development
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nothing will ever be attempted if all

possible objections must be first
overcome.
Samuel Johnson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The way to get things done is not to mind

who gets the credit of doing them.
Benjamin Jowett
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Do not walk behind me, for I may not

lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may
not follow. Do not walk beside me--in fact,
just leave me alone, OK?
Anonymous
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You don’t persuade people.

People persuade themselves.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There is nothing more difficult to take in

hand, more perilous to conduct, or more
uncertain in its success, than to take the
lead in the introduction of a new order of
things.
Machiavelli
The Prince
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I apologize if the truth

offended you.
Rhett Butler (Clark Gable)

“Gone With the Wind”
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“
Pragmatic Marketing
Immature artists imitate.

Mature artists steal.
Lionel Trilling
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Real artists ship.
Steve Jobs
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The secret is to make the time to immerse

yourself in the people you’re marketing to.
To live them, breathe with them and study

them from every angle.
Lisa Fortini-Campbell, Ph.D.

Hitting the Sweet Spot
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Conscience is what hurts when

everything else feels so good.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The trouble with doing something right the

first time is that nobody appreciates how
difficult it was.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People seem not to see that their opinion

of the world is also a confession of
character.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

(1803 - 1882)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Too many marketing people go through

the motions of visiting customers, looking
for facts that will confirm their previously
formed opinions of what should be done.
Ries and Trout

Bottom-Up Marketing
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Today is a good day to create a new

paradigm and tell everyone about it. Put it
in PowerPoint so it doesn’t seem so
obvious.
A clueless manager
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Big ideas almost always come in small

words.
Jack Trout
Living in an Agile World ™
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“
Pragmatic Marketing
Rather than seeing the world as it is,

those in charge would rather see it as
they want it to be.
Jack Trout
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The art of being wise

is the art of knowing
what to overlook.
William James
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When you’re up against a clearly superior

product, you can forget about marketing.
You cannot win a war with vastly inferior
weapons.
Al Ries & Jack Trout
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Silence is a text easy to misread.
A.A. Attanasio
The Eagle and the Sword
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Silence is one of the

hardest things to refute.
Josh Billings
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When arguing with a stupid person, be

sure he is not doing the same thing.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To acquire knowledge,
one must study;
but to acquire wisdom,
one must observe.
Marilyn vos Savant
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Microsoft’s strength has never been

technical elegance. Rather, it is knowing
how to run a business.
Richard Brandt
Upside
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Some people make headlines while

others make history.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Did you know?
Titles are a mess!
40% of product marketing

managers write product
requirements.
40% of product managers

write promotional copy.
and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are really only three types of

people: those who make things happen,
those who watch things happen, and
those who ask, “What happened?”
Ann Landers
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Expose yourself to the best things

humans have done and then try to bring
those things into what you are doing.
Steve Jobs
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When will Silicon Valley get the message

that great products are created by people,
not companies?
Dave Winer
www.scripting.com
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Make a customer,
not a sale.
Katherine Barchetti
K. Barchetti Shops
Pittsburgh
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Under-commit;
over-deliver.
Say you’ll do it in the P.M.

Then get it done in the A.M.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are three kinds of people:

one promises to do it,
one wishes he had done it,
and one just does it.
Sales & Marketing Magazine
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The only way to settle a disagreement is

on the basis of what’s right, not who’s
right.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never tell people how to do things. Tell

them what to do and they will surprise you
with their ingenuity.
General George S. Patton
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We’ve been looking for the enemy for

some time now. We’ve finally found him.
We’re surrounded.
That simplifies things.
Colonel Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller
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Available online or at your

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“
Pragmatic Marketing
A good plan executed right now is far

better than a perfect plan executed next
week.
General George S. Patton
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We live in a world of surprises.

Be prepared!
Tom Peters
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A customer’s satisfaction
is the gap between
what the customer expects and
what the customer gets.
H. Gross
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To cook really tough meat,

toss it in a pot with a horseshoe. When
the horseshoe is soft and tender, the
meat is ready.
From a sign in a Texas diner
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you are too busy to laugh,

you are too busy.
Irish Proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“I hate quotations.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
He had a gift for quotation,

which is a serviceable
substitute for wit.
Somerset Maugham
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In the future, it will become increasingly

obvious that
your competitors are
just as clueless as you are.
Scott Adams
The Dilbert Future
Thriving on Stupidity in the 21st Century
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I never worry about the future.

It comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein
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240 unique titles doing

the activities of product
management.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The future will be better tomorrow.
Dan Quayle
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The more alike two products are,

the more important
their differences become.
Regis McKenna
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Good enough is often

good enough.
Clayton Christensen
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Don’t sweat the small stuff…

and it’s all small stuff.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Remind yourself that

when you die, your “in-box”
will not be empty—
it’s not meant to be.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Feed ‘em,
love ‘em, and
leave ‘em alone.
Dr. Spock
when asked his advice on raising children
“
Pragmatic Marketing
High-tech marketing is atrocious. A lot of

the material sounds like plumbers’
journals.
Joe Costello
Cadence Design Systems
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Don’t confuse optimism

with reality.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It has been a founding principle

of our company to
listen to consumers—
and not just guess what they want.
Montgomery Kersten
x
Effective Product Marketing
Learn a repeatable process

to develop, execute and
measure go-to-market
strategies that ensure
product success.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
43.3% of statistics are meaningless.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are lies,

damn lies, and
statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are two kinds of statistics, the kind

you look up, and the kind you make up.
Rex Stout
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Having the best product

means nothing if the
people won’t buy it.
Donald A. Norman
The Invisible Computer
“
Pragmatic Marketing
After all is said and done,

more is said than done.
Aesop
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you look deeply enough,

ninety-nine out of a hundred people are
interesting—
and the one hundredth person is
interesting because he isn’t.
William F. Buckley
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Words to Avoid
virtual, scalable, flexible, value-added,
easy-to-use, quality, cutting-edge,
enterprise-wide, best-of-breed, mission-
critical
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Our product is enterprisewide, elegant,

robust, scalable, flexible, portable,
extensible, database-independent, media-
neutral, dynamic, cutting-edge-but-not-
bleeding-edge, next-generation, best-of-
breed, with unparalleled ease-of-use.
(Does your product information sound like this?)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Feedback” is a business term which

refers to the joy of criticizing other
people’s work.
Did you know?
The typical product manager is

male, age 37 with an MBA.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Before you criticize a man,

walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when
you do criticize him, you’ll be a mile away
and have his shoes.
Steven Wright
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Most folks are about as

happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Great spirits have always encountered

violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you can’t do it excellently,

don’t do it at all. Because if it’s not
excellent it won’t be profitable or fun, and
if you’re not in business for fun or profit,
what the hell are you doing here?
Robert Townsend
Up The Organization, 1970
“
Pragmatic Marketing
85% of sales people

have no documented plan for
reaching their sales goals
Sales & Marketing Magazine
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“A salesman is
got to dream, boy.
It comes with the territory.” [sic]
Arthur Miller
Death of a Salesman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Everyone has three territories:

the customers in the field,
the people at headquarters,
and the folks at home.
Neglect them at your peril.
Ed Johnson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
49% of sales managers

say their sales people have lied on a
sales call.
Sales & Marketing Management
“
Pragmatic Marketing
All communication should focus on the

customer, answering
“What’s in it for me?”
How much of your sales material is

about you and your company?
New Rules of Marketing ™
Reach your buyers

directly… by publishing
content they want to read
and search engines value
with high rankings.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Customers buy on price because they

can’t find extraordinary quality,
convenience, service and value.
Warren Greshes
Supercharged Selling
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The problem with mission statements is:

they’re rushed,
they’re announced, and then
they’re ignored.
Stephen Covey
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A mushy mission statement is an

indication that a company doesn’t know
where it’s going.
Jack Trout
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Mission statements do not belong in

marketing communications. A good
mission statement describes the future,
not the present—and prospects want to
know who you are right now.
Harry Beckwith
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The great enemy of

clear language is insincerity.
George Orwell, 1984
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Standard is better than better.
Lloyd Bloom
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is better to be clear
than to be concise.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Everyone has peak performance

potential–you just need to know where
they are coming from and meet them
there.
Blanchard, Zigarmi, and Zigarmi

Leadership and the One Minute Manager
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Every organization has to

prepare for the abandonment of
everything it does.
Peter Drucker
Did you know?
Over 60,000 people have

attended Pragmatic Marketing
seminars since 1993.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Most products are still created in a

vacuum, driven by what is technically
feasible rather than what is needed by
customers.
Kristin Zhivago
Marketing Technology
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Make definite assertions.
William Strunk, Jr.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In the factories
we make perfume.
But in the stores
we sell hope.
Charles Revson
founder of Revlon
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Change is not a destination.

Hope is not a strategy.
Rudy Giuliani
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When elephants fight

it is the grass that suffers.
Kikuyu saying
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What would you attempt to do if you knew

you could not fail?
Dr. Robert Schuller
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Everything has been thought of before,

but the problem is to think of it again.
Johann W. von Goethe
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There is nothing more frightening than

ignorance in action.
Johann W. von Goethe
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are three things I always forget.

Names, faces, …
the third I can’t remember.
Italo Svevo
Product Launch Essentials™
Learn to plan and execute a

successful product launch
grounded in launch goals,
proven strategies,
operational readiness and
cross-functional alignment.

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“
Pragmatic Marketing
Names are the hooks

we hang ideas on.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Computers may have done more harm

than good by making managers even
more inwardly focused. I find more and
more executives less and less informed
about the outside world.
Peter Drucker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there

is so little useless information.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Ability is the art of

getting credit
for all the home runs
somebody else hits.
Casey Stengel
“
Pragmatic Marketing
My greatest strength as a consultant is to

be ignorant and ask a few questions.
Peter Drucker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Make it idiot proof and someone will make

a better idiot.
From a bumper sticker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To do great and important tasks, two

things are necessary: a plan and
not quite enough time.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Leadership:
“It’s better to be first than
it is to be better.”

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Advertising is what you do when you can’t

go see somebody.
Fairfax Cone
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“
Pragmatic Marketing
A case study is what happens when you

underestimate your opponent.
Guy Kawasaki
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Category:
“If you can’t be first in a category,
set up a new category
you can be first in.”

“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is good to be without vices, but it is not

good to be without temptations.
Walter Bagehot
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are an enormous number of

managers who have
retired on the job.
Peter Drucker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Mead’s Maxim:
Always remember that you are absolutely
unique, just like everyone else.
Margaret Mead
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I was wise enough to never grow up while

fooling most people into believing I had.
Margaret Mead
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If one cannot state a matter clearly

enough so that even an intelligent twelve-
year-old can understand it, one should
remain within the cloistered walls of the
university and laboratory until one gets a
better grasp of one's subject matter.
Margaret Mead
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never doubt that a small group of

thoughtful, committed people can change
the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that
ever has.
Margaret Mead
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Mind:
“It’s better to be
first in the mind than to be
first in the marketplace.”

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“
Pragmatic Marketing
Everybody repeat after me,

“We are all individuals.”
Steven Wright
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Business has only two

basic functions:
marketing and innovation.
Peter Drucker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Perception:
“Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s
a battle of perceptions.”

“
Pragmatic Marketing
If the other guy is getting better, then

you’d better be getting better faster than
the other guy is getting better...
or you’re getting worse.
Tom Peters
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Whatever made you

successful in the past
won’t in the future.
Lew Platt, CEO

Hewlett-Packard
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Denial is how an optimist keeps from

becoming a pessimist.
Unknown
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No sense being pessimistic; it probably

wouldn’t work anyway.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I used to think I was indecisive,

but now I’m not sure.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Focus:
“The most powerful concept in marketing
is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.”

Did you know?


great material.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Failing to focus, failing to choose one

discipline and stick to it, is exactly what
leads firms to a state of mediocrity.
Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersema

Discipline of Market Leaders
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Dividing meager resources across a host

of medium-term operational goals creates
mediocrity on a broad scale.
C. K. Prahalad
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Communication is something so simple

and difficult that we can never put it in
simple words.
T. S. Matthews
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What we’ve got here is

a failure to communicate.
“Captain” (Strother Martin),

From “Cool Hand Luke,” 1967
“
Pragmatic Marketing
So much of what we call management

consists in making it hard for people to
work.
Peter Drucker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Apply people where their skills and talent

can really shine. That’s what
management is all about.
Tom DeMarco
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In a hierarchy, every employee tends to

rise to his level of incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter
The Peter Principle
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If my film makes
one more person feel miserable,
I’ll feel like I’ve done my job.
Woody Allen
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I took a course in speed reading

and was able to read
War and Peace in 20 minutes.
It's about Russia.
Woody Allen
Framework?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Division:
“Over time, a category will divide and
become two or more categories.”

“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you don’t know where you are going,

you will probably end up someplace else.
Laurence J. Peter
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A critic is a man created to praise greater

men than himself, but he is never able to
find them.
Richard Le Gallienne
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Sacrifice:
“You have to give up something in order
to get something. Find a category and
forsake all others.”

“
Pragmatic Marketing
I love criticism just so long as it’s

unqualified praise.
Noel Coward
“
Pragmatic Marketing
For every action, there is an equal and

opposite criticism.
Lawrence J. Peter
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Line Extension:
“There’s an irresistible pressure to extend
the equity of the brand.”

“
Pragmatic Marketing
He who hesitates is probably right.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Businesses must choose to be the value

leader in one discipline and meet
customer expectations in the other two.
Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersema

Discipline of Market Leaders
Did you know?
management survey.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No one is listening
until you make a mistake.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Duality:
“In the long run, every market becomes a
two-horse race.”

“
Pragmatic Marketing
Success always occurs in private, and

failure in full view.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I would rather be the man who bought the

Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it.
Will Rogers
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It’s not what you don’t know that hurts

you. It’s what you know that ain’t so.
Will Rogers
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Exclusivity:
“Two companies cannot
own the same word
in the prospect’s mind.”

“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you want to kill an idea without being

identified as the assassin, suggest that
the legal department take a look at it.
“The Dilbert Zone”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nordstrom Rules
Rule #1. Use your good judgment in all
situations. There will be no additional
rules.
The Nordstrom Employee “Handbook”

(on a single card)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Good judgment comes

from bad experience,
and a lot of that comes
from bad judgment.
Product Management


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Get your facts first,

and then you can distort them
as much as you please.
Mark Twain
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To be a success in business,
be daring,
be first,
be different.
Marchant
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Success is dependent on effort.
Sophocles
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I cannot give you the formula for success,

but I can give you the formula for failure–
which is, “Try to please everybody.”
Herbert Bayard Swope
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Try not to become

a man of success,
but rather try to become
a man of value.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Berra’s Law:
“You can observe a lot
just by watching.”
Yogi Berra
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Heller’s Law:
“The first myth of management is that it
exists.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Osborne’s Law:
“Variables won’t;
constants aren’t.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Conway’s Law:
“In any organization, there will always be
one person who knows what is going on.
This person should be fired.”
Did you know?

available.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Weiler’s Law:
“Nothing is impossible for the man who
doesn’t have to do it himself.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Law of Volunteer Labor:

“People are always available for work in
the past tense.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Cole’s Law:
Thinly sliced cabbage
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Law of Cybernetic Entomology:

“There is always one more bug.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
All that matters is your prospective

customers’ perceptions of the impact of
your product on their lives, relationships,
or jobs.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
Truman’s Law:
“If you can’t convince them,
confuse them.”
Harry S Truman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Joy’s Law:
“No matter what the name of your
company is, most of the best talent in the
world does not work for you.”
Bill Joy
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Sturgeon's Law:
“90% of everything is crap.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The secret of success is sincerity. Once

you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
Jean Giraudoux
want to buy.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The first time a Microsoft programmer got

a congratulatory email from Bill Gates,
he printed it out and framed it.
Just telling someone “Great Job!” can go
a long way.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Reward the values you want to

perpetuate. People usually do exactly
what you pay them to do.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The problem with measurement is that too

many companies have trained their
employees to measure the wrong things.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
There go my people.
I must find out where they are going so I
can lead them.
Alexandre Ledru-Rollin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or

not to have a mind is being very wasteful.
How true that is.
Dan Quayle
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Journalism: a profession whose business

it is to explain to others what it personally
does not understand.
Lord Northcliff
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The press, which is mostly controlled by

vested interests, has an excessive
influence on public opinion.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Lead by example.
Act the way you want
your team to act.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A resonator is a product or service that

sells itself.

Did you know?

have?

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Resonators are in the market,

not in your mind.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
While it’s not difficult to understand how to

get tuned in and transform your business,
it’s just easier to tune out.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
Your business must be continuous

problem solving for your market.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
What’s not worth doing is

not worth doing well.
Don Hebb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What’s not worth doing well

is not worth doing.
Thomas Jefferson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Whatever is worth doing at all

is worth doing well.
Earl of Chesterfield
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Things are almost never as bad as you

think they are. And losing your temper
never improves the situation.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Find out what they like,

And how they like it
And let ‘em have it,
Just that way!
Fats Waller
Ain’t Misbehavin’
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you want to achieve excellence, you

can get there today. As of this second,
quit doing less-than-excellent work.
Thomas J Watson
embrace.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The Baby Ruth candy bar was not named

for Babe Ruth, the baseball great, as
many people think. It was actually named
after Baby Ruth, Grover Cleveland’s baby
daughter.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The size of the human brain has

increased approximately 15% in the last
100 years.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The longest made-up word in the English

language is “pneumonoultramicroscopic-
silicovolcanoconiosis.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Geometry was invented by ancient people

of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent to
identify fields after floods.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The full name of Los Angeles is “El

Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los
Angeles de Porciuncula.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It doesn’t matter what you do,

it only matters what you say you’ve done
and what you say you’re going to do.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Circular Definition:
see Definition, Circular.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Only 55% of all Americans know that the

sun is a star.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It hurts to be on the cutting edge.
Did you know?



and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you can’t get your work

done in the first 24 hours,
work nights.
A clueless manager
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In just two days,

tomorrow will be yesterday.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Don’t be irreplaceable.
If you can’t be replaced,
you can’t be promoted.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Can you imagine a world with no

hypothetical situations?
Steven Wright
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You can go anywhere you want if you

look serious and carry a clipboard.
Scott Adams
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Too much of a good thing is wonderful.
Mae West
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Well done is better

than well said.
Benjamin Franklin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People will accept your ideas much more

readily if you tell them that Benjamin
Franklin said it first.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Indecision is the key to flexibility.

execution.

book.
and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What does not destroy me

makes me stronger.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you always do what you’ve always

done, then you’ll always get what you
always got.
Aerosmith
“Get A Grip”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Zeal without knowledge is like

fire without light.
English Proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When the bosses talk about improving

productivity, they are never talking about
themselves.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you can’t say anything good about

someone, sit right here by me.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth

embroidered on a pillow in her sitting room
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We are no more than candles burning in

the wind.
Japanese Proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is better to light one candle than curse

the darkness.
Motto of the Christopher Society
“
Pragmatic Marketing
One must have a good memory to be able

to keep the promises one makes.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If we don’t succeed,
we run the risk of failure.
Dan Quayle
Did you know?
Titles are a mess!

requirements.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If at first you don’t succeed,

then skydiving probably
isn’t for you.
“
Pragmatic Marketing

try again. Then quit.
No use being a damn fool about it.
W. C. Fields
“
Pragmatic Marketing

destroy all evidence that you tried.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If at first you do succeed,

try not to look astonished.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you try to fail, and succeed,

which have you done?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A conclusion is the place where you got

tired of thinking.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A pat on the back is

only a few centimeters from a kick in the
butt.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Hanlon’s razor:
“Never attribute to malice that which is
adequately explained by stupidity.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Green’s law of debate:

“Anything is possible if you don’t know
what you’re talking about.”


office.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Stewart’s law of retroaction:

“It is easier to get forgiveness than
permission.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Harrison’s postulate:
“For every action, there is an equal and
opposite criticism.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Lynch’s law:
“When the going gets tough, everyone
leaves.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Eat one live toad the first thing in the

morning and nothing worse will happen to
you the rest of the day.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
paradigm \PAIR-uh-dyme\ noun:

1. example, pattern; especially; an
outstanding example or archetype
2. a philosophical and theoretical
framework of a scientific school or
discipline
Can you use the term

“paradigm” without laughing?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Experience:
something you don’t get until
just after you need it.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To steal ideas from one person is

plagiarism; to steal from many is
research.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There’s nothing wrong with market

research as long as you remember that
marketing is a game of the future. Most
market research is a report on the past.
Ries and Trout

Bottom-Up Marketing
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The customer is a rear-view mirror, not a

guide to the future.
George Colony
Forrester Research
Did you know?

management.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Winning isn't everything,

but wanting to win is.
Vince Lombardi
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Two Rules for Life

1. Never tell everything at once.
2. …
Ken Venturi
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you’re in a vehicle going the speed of

light, what happens when you turn on the
headlights?
Steven Wright
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Why do we drive on parkways and park

on driveways?
Steven Wright
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To err is human;
to forgive is not our policy.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Ever notice when you blow in a dog’s face

he gets mad at you, but when you take
him in a car he sticks his head out the
window?
Steven Wright
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To err is human;
to blame your computer for your mistakes
is even more human... in fact, it is
downright natural.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When people agree with me

I always feel that I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Anyone can do any amount of work

provided it isn’t the work he is supposed
to be doing.
x

product success.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You can't put the toothpaste

back in the tube.
H. R. Haldeman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The number one cause of

computer problems is
computer solutions.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you are good,

you will be assigned
all the work.
If you are really good,
you will get out of it.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What is now proved

was once only imagined.
William Blake
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Praise publicly.
Punish privately.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A computer program will always do what

you tell it to do, but rarely what you want it
to do.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We’re all in this alone.
Lily Tomlin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Keep your boss’s boss

off your boss’s back.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are two kinds of people:

those who finish what they start
and so on...
Robert Byrne
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Historians fall into one of three categories:
those who lie;

those who are mistaken;
those who do not know.
Anonymous
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Somebody has to do something, and it’s

just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
Jerry Garcia
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Anything is possible, I've come to realize,

and I do think it's pathetic.
Leslie Sloane Zelnick,

spokeswoman for Britney Spears
“
Pragmatic Marketing
They laughed at Joan of Arc,

but she went right ahead
and built it anyway.
Gracie Allen
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People who go to conferences are usually

the ones who shouldn’t.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The first time I walked into a trophy shop,

I looked around and thought to myself,
“This guy is good!”
Fred Wolf
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you can’t make it good,

at least make it look good.
Bill Gates
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If morale is low it’s because the

employees have character defects.
There’s nothing you can do about that.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If it wasn’t for the last minute,

nothing would get done.
Reach your buyers

with high rankings.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
At work, the authority of a person is

inversely proportional to the number of
pens that person is carrying.
Scott Adams
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When you don’t know what to do, walk

fast and look worried.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nothing is as frustrating as arguing with

someone who knows what he’s talking
about.
Sam Ewing
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No matter how much you do,

you never do enough.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There is nothing worse than a sharp

image of a fuzzy concept.
Ansel Adams
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The last person that quit or was fired will

be held responsible for everything that
goes wrong.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Management By Objective”
works only if you first
think through your objectives.
90% of the time you haven’t.
Peter Drucker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Hershey’s Kisses are called that because

the machine that makes them looks like
it’s kissing the conveyor belt.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The average person

thinks he isn’t.
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There is only one rule in our world and

that one rule, simply and succinctly, is
“There are no rules.”
Tom Peters
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The Law of Proximity:

“The nearer you are to your boss’s office,
the lower the quality of your
assignments.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We have only one person to blame, and

that’s each other.
Bary Beck, New York Ranger,

during NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you can keep your head when all about

you are losing theirs, perhaps you have
misunderstood the situation.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
On the road to the future,

who will be the windshield,
and who will be the bug?
Gary Hamel
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Microsoft programs are

generally bug-free.”
Bill Gates
quoted in Focus Magazine, 1993
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Before C++ we had to code all our bugs

by hand; now we can inherit them.
A tired developer
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You can get by on charm for about 15

minutes. After that, you better know
something.
H. Jackson Brown
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Give me ambiguity
or give me something else.
Steven Wright

proven strategies,

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
He can compress the most words into the

smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
Abraham Lincoln
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of

their unwanted people without killing them
used to burn their houses down—hence
the expression “to get fired.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Each unit on the Richter Scale is

equivalent to a power factor of about 32.
Though it goes to 10, 9 is estimated to be
the point of total tectonic destruction while
2 is the smallest that can be felt unaided.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame

Street were named after Bert the cop and
Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's
“It’s A Wonderful Life.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Power is (almost) all there is!

Powerlessness is a state of mind. If you
think you are powerless, you are.
Tom Peters
“
Pragmatic Marketing
All good things which exist are the fruits of

originality.
John Stuart Mill
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Armored knights raised their visors to

identify themselves when they rode past
their king. This custom has become the
modern military salute.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Marketing,
where the rubber meets the sky.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
He who laughs last

thinks slowest.
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Ever stop to think,

and forget to start again?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If I were two-faced,
would I be wearing this one?
Abraham Lincoln
“
Pragmatic Marketing
All generalizations are false.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Hard work often pays off after time, but

laziness always pays off now!
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We are Microsoft.
Resistance Is Futile.
You Will Be Assimilated.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
80% of a good product is better than

0% of a great product.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People who like this sort of thing will find

this the sort of thing they like.
Abraham Lincoln,
in a book review
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If this is coffee, please bring me some

tea; but if this is tea, please bring me
some coffee.
Abraham Lincoln
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Take nothing but pictures.

Leave nothing but footprints.
Kill nothing but time.
Motto of the Baltimore Grotto

(caving society)

management roles &

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Happiness ain’t a thing in itself—it’s only a

contrast with something that ain’t
pleasant.
Mark Twain
“
Pragmatic Marketing
'Tis better to be silent and thought a fool,

than to speak and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Few things are harder to put up with than

a good example.
Mark Twain
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Have you considered this?

It may be that some people’s sole
purpose in life is simply to serve as a bad
example.
despair.com
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Always do right—
this will gratify some
and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Honesty is the best policy—

when there is money in it.
Mark Twain
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Call it what you will,

incentives are what get
people to work harder.
Nikita Krushchev
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What gets measured gets done.

What gets paid for
gets done more.
Tom Peters
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The most important things cannot be

measured.
Ed Deming
Did you know?


great material.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You can expect what you inspect.
Ed Deming
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The problem is at the top;

management is the problem.
Ed Deming
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Do what you can,

with what you have,
where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Everything should be
as simple as it is
but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Find out what you like doing best and get

someone to pay you for doing it.
Katherine Whitehorn
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Genius is one percent inspiration and

ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Thomas A. Edison
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“He flung himself from the room, flung

himself upon his horse and rode madly off
in all directions.”
Stephen Leacock
“
Pragmatic Marketing
He was a bold man that first

ate an oyster.
Jonathan Swift
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“I am still learning.”
Michelangelo
Framework?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When you’re through learning,

you’re through.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I have the simplest tastes. I am always

satisfied with the best.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“I think, therefore I am.”

—Rene Descartes
“I think, therefore I am…

I think.”
—Howard Schneider
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I’m a great believer in luck,

and I find the harder I work
the more I have of it.
Thomas Jefferson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Kites rise highest against the wind,

not with it.
Winston Churchill
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Lead us not into temptation.

Just tell us where it is; we'll find it.
Sam Levenson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I can resist everything

except temptation.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nothing great was ever achieved without

enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nothing like a little

judicious levity.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Did you know?
management survey.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Slow and steady wins the race.
Robert Lloyd
The Hare and the Tortoise
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Small projects need much more help than

great.
Dante
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The best way to be boring is to leave

nothing out.
Voltaire
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The fewer the facts,

the stronger the opinion.
Arnold H. Glasow
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The more things change,

the more they are the same.
Alphonse Karr
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The words walked right

out of my mouth.
James Brady
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Think, or be damned.”
— Bryan Penton
“Think? Why think? We have computers

to do that for us.”
— Jean Rostand
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The first step in marketing your product is

getting it right.
Is it? Find out.
How? Ask.
Product Management


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
‘Tomorrow’ is often the busiest time of the

year.
Spanish Proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I believe we are on an irreversible trend

toward more freedom and democracy—
but that could change.
Dan Quayle
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Indecision is the key to flexibility.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You cannot tell which way the train went

by looking at the track.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There is absolutely no substitute for a

genuine lack of preparation.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Happiness is merely the

remission of pain.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nostalgia ain’t what it

used to be.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Sometimes too much drink

is not enough.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Your opinion,
although interesting,
is irrelevant.
Pragmatic Marketing
Did you know?

available.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The careful application of terror is also a

form of communication.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Someone who thinks logically is a nice

contrast to the real world.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Things are more like they are today than

they have ever been before.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Anything worth fighting for is worth

fighting dirty for.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Friends may come and go,

but enemies accumulate.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Advertising is the art of making

whole lies out of
half truths.
Edgar A. Scoaff
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Half the money I spend on

advertising is wasted,
and the trouble is,
I don’t know which half.
John Wanamaker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Branding, as an advertising and

marketing term, has as its origins the
visual mark burned into a cow's butt.
David Meerman Scott
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A billion here and a billion there, and soon

you're talking about real money.
Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen
want to buy.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Give them quality.

That’s the best kind of advertising.
Milton S. Hershey
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Good marketing will kill a

mediocre product.
Scott Cary
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The fastest way to kill a project is to

schedule it.
Stephen Lisa
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I have seen the truth and it makes no

sense.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We spend billions every year

manufacturing fake charm that goes
under the heading of “public relations.”
Anita Loos
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Whoever is careless with truth in small

matters cannot be trusted in important
affairs.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you can smile when things go wrong,

you probably have someone in mind to
blame.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The more you run over a dead cat, the

flatter it gets.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There is always
one more imbecile
than you counted on.
Did you know?

have?

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Remind people that profit is the difference

between revenue and expense. This
makes you look smart.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
This is as bad as it can get...

but don’t bet on it.
Unknown
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I learned long ago

never to wrestle with a pig.
You get dirty, and besides,
the pig likes it.
Cyrus Ching
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never argue with an idiot. They drag you

down to their level, then beat you with
experience.
Unknown
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There is nothing so annoying as

arguing with somebody
who knows what he is
talking about.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Is there another word for synonym?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Why isn’t “phonetic” spelled

the way it sounds?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You can fool too many of the people too

much of the time.
James Thurber
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The easiest way to find something lost

around the house is to buy a replacement.
embrace.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A closed mouth
gathers no feet.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Health is merely the slowest possible rate

at which one can die.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The only difference between a rut and a

grave is the depth.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Do not wish to be anything but what you

are, and try to be that perfectly.
T. Francis de Sales
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Trying to be happy is like trying to build a

machine for which the only specification is
that it should run noiselessly.
Anonymous
“
Pragmatic Marketing
perfunctory \per-FUNK-tuh-ree\
adjective: 1. characterized by routine or
superficiality; mechanical
2. lacking in interest or enthusiasm
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Many of the company’s best lessons

come from failure. If you fire the person
who fails, you throw away the experience.
Julie Bick
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If there is no price to be paid,

it is also not of value.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Rather than focusing on buyers and their

problems, organizations that struggle to
resonate in their marketplace are the ones
that develop offerings using inside-out
thinking.

Did you know?



and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never buy what you do not want just

because it is cheap.
Thomas Jefferson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No one can make you feel inferior without

your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Eat your own dog food” means that you

should use your products yourself before
forcing others to.
Julie Bick
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The buyers of dog food have different

requirements than the users of dog food.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Half of all Americans live within 50 miles

of where they grew up.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Absent any real data, conference rooms

are just opinions.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
70% of all Americans have visited either

Disneyland or DisneyWorld.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Even huge corporations can be nimble, if

they have a clear direction and allow the
autonomy to make necessary changes.
Julie Bick
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Think education is expensive?

Try ignorance.
From a bumper sticker.

Apply this to your knowledge of customers and prospects

execution.

book.
and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Learn the phrase:

“I don’t know but I’ll find out.”
No one expects you to
know everything.
Don’t pretend that you do.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You can guess what your customer

thinks, or you can ask him.
(Hint: asking is better.)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Heinz Ketchup
leaving the bottle
travels at 25 miles per year.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You cannot win by

doing the same thing as your competitor,
only 10 percent better.
Offer something different and

be 10 times better.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Only when an innovation solves people’s

problems does it become
a potent force.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
There won’t be anything we won’t say to

people to try and convince them that our
way is the way to go.
Bill Gates
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Insanity is doing what you’ve always done

the way you’ve always done it and
expecting a different outcome.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Most companies don’t really believe they

can make a better product.
Ely Callaway
Callaway Golf
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Telephone call? Telephone call? That’s

communication with the outside world.
Doctor’s discretion. If all of these nuts
could just make phone calls, they could
spread insanity.”
The character Jeffrey Goines

(played by Brad Pitt)
in the film “Twelve Monkeys”
Did you know?
Titles are a mess!

requirements.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I don’t suffer from insanity.

I enjoy every minute of it.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Laugh alone,
and the world thinks you’re insane.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Don’t drop the ball;

either arrange for someone to catch it or
let your boss know.
Julie Bick
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Before you create a product or service,

you must know that the problem you will
solve is urgent and pervasive, and that
buyers will be willing to spend money to
solve it.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are 3 kinds of people:

those who can count
and those who can’t.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are 10 types of people...

those who understand binary
and those who don't.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If trouble is brewing, let the boss know as

soon as possible. It gives your manager
time to help you, defend you, or prepare
you for what’s to come.
Julie Bick
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Why is ‘abbreviation’ such a long word?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The life of a software architect is a long,

and sometimes painful, succession of
suboptimal decisions made partly in the
dark.
Grady Booch


office.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Here’s some good news:

as you get closer to the end of a project,
there are fewer things that can go wrong.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The sooner you fall behind,

the more time you’ll have to catch up.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you must choose between two evils,

pick the one you’ve never tried before.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Any organization can benefit from getting

tuned in, because they’ll start to create the
products and services people want to buy.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
How many of you believe in telekinesis?

Raise my hands....
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Warning: dates in the calendar are closer

than they appear.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Caution: items on the roadmap appear

closer than they actually are.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Hit ‘em where they ain’t.
Did you know?

management.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Don’t look for answers in your office. Get

your ideas and products in front of
customers sooner, not later.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Focus on doing a few things really well.

Spreading your efforts across too many
projects prevents any of them from
succeeding.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Big events make good deadlines.

Outside pressure can help you focus,
prioritize and plan.
Julie Bick
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Every week, write down three things to

accomplish that will make a
difference to your career
or your company.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The ‘perfect’ software is in the next

release. Always has been, always will be.
Roger Graham
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Two heads are better than one. When

you’re wrestling with a thorny issue,
get others involved.
Creativity is not a one-person job.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We have two ears and one mouth so that

we can listen twice as much as we speak.
Epictetus
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I’ve over-educated myself in all the things

I shouldn’t have known at all.
Noel Coward
“
Pragmatic Marketing
So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I

realized, ever since I started working,
every single day of my life has been
worse than the day before it. So that
means that every single day that you see
me, that’s on the worst day of my life.
“Peter Gibbons” (Ron Livingston)

in Office Space
x

product success.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Bob: Looks like you’ve been missing a lot

of work lately.
Peter: Well, I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve

been missing it, Bob.
“Peter Gibbons” (Ron Livingston)

in Office Space
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Everything depends on what the people

are capable of wanting.
Enrico Malatesta
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If everything’s coming your way, you’re

probably in the wrong lane.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Our plans miscarry

because they have no aim.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I hear and I forget.

I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.
Chinese proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The prime purpose of eloquence is to

keep other people from speaking.
Louis Vermeil
“
Pragmatic Marketing
He’s been that way for years—

a born questioner
but he hates answers.
Ring Lardner
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The best argument is that which seems

merely an explanation.
Dale Carnegie
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Things are not always what they seem.
Phaedrus
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Half the work that is done in this world is

to make things appear what they are not.
Elias Root Beadle
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I don’t meet competition;

I crush it.
Charles Revson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Hope is merely
disappointment
deferred.
W. Burton Baldry
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When you get right down to the root of the

meaning of the word “succeed” you will
find that it simply means to follow through.
F. W. Nichol
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Execute passionately!
Marginal tactics executed passionately
always outperform brilliant tactics
executed marginally.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
USA Today has come out with a new

survey: Apparently three out of four
people make up 75% of the population.
David Letterman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a

day. Teach him to fish, and he will sit in a
boat drinking beer all day.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a

day; teach him to use the Internet and he
won’t bother you for weeks.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Teaching should be such that what is

offered is perceived as a valuable gift and
not as a hard duty.
Albert Einstein
Reach your buyers

with high rankings.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you can learn to focus on what you

have, you will always see that the
universe is abundant. If you concentrate
on what you don’t have, you will never
have enough.
Oprah Winfrey
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I always wanted to be somebody, but I

should have been more specific.
Lily Tomlin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A Truth of Customer Service:

“Do unto customers as bosses have just
done unto you.”
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Every undertaking
looks like a failure
in the middle.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Sales people move one customer forward

in the buying cycle; marketing people
move all customers forward.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Change is a threat
when done to me,
an opportunity
when done by me.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Industries, companies, traditions,

lifestyles, and careers that fail to adapt to
change will die.
It’s cruel; it’s brutal; it’s reality.
Tom Peters
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Sometimes we have to look reality in the

eye and deny it.
Garrison Keillor
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never be afraid to
sit awhile and think.
Lorraine Hansberry
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Each of us wages a private battle each

day between the grand fantasies we have
for ourselves and what actually happens.
Cathy Guisewite
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Holding on to anger only gives you tense

muscles.
Joan Lunden
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Rule for evaluating computer technology:

If it works, its obsolete.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You know what the problem with a lot of

people is? Overpopulation.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“This ‘telephone’ has too many

shortcomings to be seriously considered
as a means of communications.”
Western Union memo,

1876
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Computers in the future may weigh no

more than 1.5 tons.”
Popular Mechanics,
1949
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“I think there is a world market for maybe

five computers.”
Thomas Watson,
chairman of IBM, 1943.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In a sense, there are only five computers

on earth: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM,
and Amazon.
Prabhakar Raghavan
Yahoo Research Chief
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“There is no reason for any individual to

have a computer in their home.”
Kenneth Olsen,
president of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977

proven strategies,

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“We don’t like their sound. Groups of

guitars are on the way out.”
Decca Records’ statement on rejecting the Beatles,

1962
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
John Lennon
“
Pragmatic Marketing
All the information

for a tree
is in an acorn—
the tree is somehow in there.
Paul McCartney
“
Pragmatic Marketing
By the time of his death,

Thomas Edison held 1093 patents.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is better to fail in originality than to

succeed in imitation.
Herman Melville
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We try never to forget that medicine is for

the patient.
It is not for the profits.
The profits follow.
George Merck II
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Life is not only money.

If you do things right and take care of your
employees and customers, the profits will
come by themselves.
Fast Company
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Profit is like oxygen.

Without it, there is no life.
But oxygen is not the
point of life.
Tom Peters
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Boosting profits through downsizing was

easy; all executives had to do was take
the heat from layoffs.
G. William Dauphinais
Price Waterhouse
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You cannot shrink your way to greatness.
Arthur Martinez
CEO, Sears
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In the final analysis,

you can’t continue to
reduce costs and grow.
Paul Cook
Raychem
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Wall Street won’t pay any more for raising

profit margins on a stagnant sales base.
The crucial issue has become how far
does a company stretch for growth.
Pankaj Ghemawat
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Growth is the by-product of doing things

right. But in itself, it is not a worthy goal.
In fact, growth is the culprit behind
impossible goals.
Jack Trout
“
Pragmatic Marketing
While costs must remain under control

and “fat” kept to a minimum, in the long
haul, it’s the builders who reap the
rewards from Wall Street.
Tom Peters
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You don’t leap a chasm in two bounds.
Chinese proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When I pointed out that we also had a

responsibility to our customers, and to
the community at large, I was shocked
that not a single person at that meeting
agreed.
David Packard,
1949
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Disneyland will never be completed, as

long as there is imagination left in the
world.
Walt Disney
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Imagination is more important than

knowledge. Knowledge is limited;
imagination encircles the world.
Albert Einstein

management roles &

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The difference between genius and

stupidity is that genius has its limits.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It has become appallingly obvious that our

technology has exceeded our humanity.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Even if you are on the right track, you’ll

get run over if you just sit there.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We worked furiously.
Because we didn’t have fear,
we could do something drastic.
Mararu Ibuka,
Sony Corporation, 1991
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Our company has, indeed, stumbled onto

some of its new products. But never
forget that you can only stumble if you’re
moving.
Richard P. Carlton
3M Corporation, 1950
“
Pragmatic Marketing
My philosophy is business is to
listen, listen, listen
to people who do the work and
listen, listen, listen
to my customers.
Ross Perot
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Failure is actually a great lesson. Success

is sometimes the hard part, because all
you’re left with is tremendous paranoia.
You know you can’t repeat it.
Nick Nolte
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Pride is what we have.

Vanity is what others have.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“The world isn’t run by weapons anymore,

or energy, or money. It’s run by little ones
and zeroes, little bits of data. It’s all just
electrons.”
The Character “Cosmo”

in the movie “Sneakers” (1992)
Did you know?


great material.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A day without sunshine is like night.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Home is the place where, when you have

to go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost
“
Pragmatic Marketing
He who is afraid of asking is ashamed of

learning.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
All the things I really like to do are either

immoral, illegal, or fattening.
Alexander Woollcott
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Talk is cheap because

supply exceeds demand.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
On the whole, human beings want to be

good, but not too good, and not quite all
the time.
George Orwell
“1984”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are two ways to slide easily through

life: to believe everything or
to doubt everything.
Both ways save us from thinking.
Alfred Korzybski
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It takes 20 years to
build a reputation
and five minutes
to ruin it.
Warren Buffett
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Confidence comes not from always being

right but from
not fearing to be wrong.
Peter T. Mcintyre
Framework?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The secret of business is to know

something that nobody else knows.
Aristotle Onassis
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Subtlety is not a virtue of our culture, but it

appeals to me and always has.
Robert Redford
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Your use of language has altered since

our arrival. It is currently laced with, shall
we say, more colorful metaphors.”
Spock
in Star Trek IV
(the one with the whales)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
He feels safer about your guesses than

most other people’s facts.
McCoy to Spock
in Star Trek IV
(the one with the whales)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Your work is ingenious.

It’s quality work. There are simply too
many notes, that’s all. Just cut a few and
it will be perfect.”
Emperor Joseph II, speaking to Mozart

in “Amadeus” (1984)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The challenge of developing products is

not in deciding
what to include but
what you can omit.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Everything has been said before, but

since nobody listens we have to keep
going back and beginning all over again.
André Gide
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You need the courage to say no to the

proposition that you can make more
money by extending the line, using your
well-known name.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It’s probably dangerous if you can explain

to somebody the differences between
“re-engineering”,
“down-sizing”, and
“right-sizing.”
Did you know?
management survey.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You’ve been in marketing too long if you

can spell “paradigm”or if you actually
know what a paradigm is.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is easier to resist
at the beginning
than at the end.
Leonardo da Vinci
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Minds are like parachutes;

they work best when open.
Lord Thomas Dewar
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never underestimate the power of stupid

people in large groups.
despair.com
“
Pragmatic Marketing
As I grow older,
I pay less attention
to what people say.
I just watch what they do.
Andrew Carnegie
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I am not young enough

to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Work is a fine thing if it doesn’t take too

much of your spare time.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Most of the time, the best decisions we

have made concerning deals
is to say “no.”
Ellen Siminoff,
Yahoo
“
Pragmatic Marketing
One hundred percent of the shots you

don’t take don’t go in.
Wayne Gretzky
Product Management


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If automobiles were like computers, a

Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get
one million miles to the gallon, and
explode once a year, killing everyone
inside.
Robert X Cringely
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The problem with

“quick and dirty” is that
“dirty” is remembered long after “quick” is
forgotten.
Steve McConnell
Software Project Survival Guide
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What do you want for your product?

Good, cheap, quick:
pick any two.
Old engineer’s saying
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A complex system that does not work is

invariably found to have evolved from a
simpler system that worked perfectly.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.

The most certain way to succeed is to
always try—just one more time.
Thomas Edison
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Ladder:
“The strategy to use depends
on which rung you occupy
on the ladder.”

“
Pragmatic Marketing
Most companies operate with a

development process that was never
designed in the first place, is not
documented, and where exceptions are
the rule.
Culpepper and Associates

Product Planning Practices Survey
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Pay attention to your enemies, for they

are the first to discover your mistakes.
Antishenes, 500 BC
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Why isn’t ‘11’ pronounced

‘onety-one’?
Did you know?

available.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“It can only be attributable to human error.

This sort of thing has cropped up before,
and it has always been due to human
error.”
HAL 9000
2001. A Space Odyssey
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The typical pencil can draw a line 35

miles long or write approximately 45,000
words.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Happy is the man who can laugh at

himself, for he will never cease to be
amused.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.
Walt Disney
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You will always get the greatest

recognition for the job you least like.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The most likely way for the world to be

destroyed, most experts agree, is by
accident. That’s where we come in; we’re
computer professionals.
We cause accidents.
Nathaniel Borenstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I don’t know the difference between

ignorance and apathy, and I couldn’t care
less.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“These are the new leads. These are the

Glengarry leads.
To you, these are gold; you do not get
these. Because to give them to you would
be throwing them away.”
“Blake” (Alec Baldwin)

Glengarry Glen Ross
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“In every job that must be done, there is

an element of fun. You find the fun and—
snap!—the job’s a game!”
“Mary Poppins”
want to buy.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you see a bandwagon,

it's too late.
Sir James Goldsmith
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The work of the individual still remains the

spark that moves mankind forward.
Igor Sikorsky
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I’m not schooled in the science of human

factors, but I suspect “surprise” is not an
element of a robust user interface.
Chip Rosenthal
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A user interface is well designed when the

program behaves exactly how the user
thought it would.
Joel Spolsky
www.JoelOnSoftware.com
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Every snowflake in an avalanche pleads

not guilty.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Visionary companies focus primarily on

beating themselves.
James Collins & Jerry Porras

Built to Last
“
Pragmatic Marketing
One sometimes finds

what one is not looking for.
Sir Alexander Fleming

(the discoverer of penicillin)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Alexander Fleming opened each Petri

dish and examined it before tossing it into
the cleaning solution. One made him stop
and say, “That's funny.”
Sir Alexander Fleming

(the discoverer of penicillin)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The most exciting phrase to hear in

science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but
“Hmmm. That’s funny…”
Isaac Asimov
Did you know?

have?

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We wouldn't worry so much about what

people thought of us if we knew how
seldom they did.
Ann Landers
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It’s hard to make predictions,

especially about the future.
Yogi Berra
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The 50-50-90 rule:

Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of
getting something right, there’s a 90%
probability you’ll get it wrong.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The rule of 180:

The first 90% of a project is completed in
the first 90% of the schedule. The
remaining 10% is finished in the last 90%
of the schedule.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never buy through your ears

but through your eyes.
Irish proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The trouble with being punctual is that

nobody’s there to appreciate it.
Franklin P. Jones
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The best horse doesn’t always win the

race.
Irish proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What vegetable do you throw away the

outside, cook the inside, eat the outside,
and throw away the inside?
Answer: Corn
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We tend to meet any new situation by

reorganizing, and what a wonderful
method it can be for creating the illusion
of progress while actually producing
confusion, inefficiency, and
demoralization.
Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.
embrace.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
For a moment,
nothing happened.
Then, after a second or so, nothing
continued to happen.
Douglas Adams
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Software gets slower faster

than hardware gets faster.
Nicklaus Wirth
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Finish every day and be done with it. You

have done what you could. Some
blunders and absurdities no doubt have
crept in; forget them
as soon as you can.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The only limits are,

as always,
those of vision.
James Broughton
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Do or do not.
There is no try.
Yoda
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When I am working on a problem I never

think about beauty. I only think about how
to solve the problem. But when I have
finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I
know it is wrong.
Buckminster Fuller
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are two kinds of people who never

amount to much: those who cannot do
what they are told, and those who can do
nothing else.
Cyrus Curtis
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Start by doing what’s necessary, then do

what’s possible, and suddenly you are
doing the impossible.
Saint Francis of Assisi
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is better to train ten people

than to do the work of ten people.
But it is harder.
D.L. Moody
Did you know?



and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Wise men talk because they have

something to say; fools talk because they
have to say something.
Plato
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you

tend to see every problem as a nail.
Abraham H. Maslow
“
Pragmatic Marketing
An excellent strategy without execution

will result in failure. And, perfect execution
of a bad strategy will still result in failure.
Dale E. Hopkins,
Aspect Development
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Children today are tyrants. They

contradict their parents, gobble their food,
and tyrannize their teachers.
Socrates
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Drawing on my fine command of

language, I said nothing.
Robert Benchley
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what

people say you cannot do.
Walter Bagehot
“
Pragmatic Marketing
With ordinary talents and extraordinary

perseverance,
all things are attainable.
Thomas Buxton
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It's true hard work

never killed anybody,
but I figure, why take the chance?
Ronald Reagan
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Surround yourself with the best people

you can find, delegate authority, and don’t
interfere.
Ronald Reagan

execution.

book.
and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
History is a gallery of pictures in which

there are few originals and many copies.
Alexis de Tocqueville
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Education is our passport to the future, for

tomorrow belongs to the people who
prepare for it today.
Malcolm X
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The roots of education are bitter,

but the fruit is sweet.
Aristotle
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A person will only change when the pain

of staying the same is greater than the
pain of changing.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Education is what survives when what

has been learned has been forgotten.
B. F. Skinner
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Anyone can steer the ship when the sea

is calm.
Publilius Syrus
“
Pragmatic Marketing
However beautiful the strategy,

you should occasionally
look at the results.
Winston Churchill
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The best executive is one who has sense

enough to pick good people to do what he
wants done, and self-restraint enough to
keep from meddling with them while they
do it.
Theodore Roosevelt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Ever notice that

anyone going slower than you
is an idiot, but
anyone going faster than you
is a maniac?
Did you know?
Titles are a mess!

requirements.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If we all did the things we are capable of

doing, we would literally astound
ourselves.
Thomas A. Edison
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you had to identify, in one word, the

reason why the human race has not
achieved, and never will achieve, its full
potential, that word would be “meetings.”
Dave Barry
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Constant effort and frequent mistakes are

the stepping stones of genius.
Elbert Hubbard
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Not only do technical people try to sell all of the

features, when they do attempt to emphasize certain
features, they tend to pick the wrong ones. Product
developers will place the “most difficult to achieve”
function at the top of the list. The consumer, on the
other hand, will be more impressed with the function
that makes the biggest improvement in their job
performance. These two functions are seldom the
same in my experience.
Kristin Zhivago
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If I had wanted your website to make

noise I would have licked my finger and
rubbed it across the monitor.
found in a usenet .sig
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nothing is ever gained by winning an

argument and losing a customer.
C.F. Norton
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Outstanding leaders go out of their way to

boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If
people believe in themselves, it’s amazing
what they can accomplish.
Sam Walton
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Everyone is born into the world to do

something unique and something
distinctive, and if he or she does not do it,
it will never be done.
Dr. Benjamin E. Mays
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Gonzalo Guerrero fought with the Maya

against the Spaniards. His tactics of
ambush and cunning gave rise to the
phrase “guerrilla warfare.”


office.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is far more impressive when others

discover your good qualities without your
help.
Judith Martin (“Miss Manners”)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you lend someone $20 and never see

that person again, it was probably worth
it.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Generally speaking, you aren’t learning

much when your mouth is moving.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never miss a good chance

to shut up.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Pasteur’s dictum:
In the field of observation, chance favors
only the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Plenty of people miss their share of

happiness, not because they never found
it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it.
William Feather
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Now is no time to think of what you do not

have. Think of what you can do with what
there is.
Ernest Hemingway
“
Pragmatic Marketing
This is the bitterest pain among men, to

have much knowledge but no power.
Herodotus,
ca. 430 B.C.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
While creating the movie Toy Story

(1995), the animation team at Pixar
perfected the movement of the toy
soldiers by gluing some sneakers to a
sheet of wood and trying to walk around
with them on.
Did you know?

management.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
While we ponder when to begin,

it becomes too late.
Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Shared joys are doubled;

shared sorrows are halved.
English saying
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You cannot design better products by

staying in the office.
Tom Kelley
The Art of Innovation
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In everyone's life, at some time, our inner

fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by
an encounter with another human being.
We should all be thankful for those people
who rekindle the inner spirit.
Albert Schweitzer
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Do not follow where the path may lead.

Go instead where there is no path and
leave a trail.
George Bernard Shaw
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The truth is that nobody knows what

magic combination produces a first-rate
piece of work.
Sidney Lumet
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is wise to direct your anger towards

problems, not people; to focus your
energies on answers, not excuses.
William Arthur Ward
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Enjoy the little things in life, for one day

you may look back and realize they were
the big things.
Antonio Smith
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you want to make enemies,

try to change something.
Woodrow Wilson
x

product success.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If I had a gardener who spent as much

time fixing her shovel as we spend fooling
with our computers, I’d buy her a good
shovel. At least you can buy a good
shovel.
Erasmus Smums
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Creating an interface is much like building

a house; if you don’t get the foundation
right, no amount of decorating can fix the
resulting structure.
Jef Raskin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A good design is better

than you think.
Rex Heftman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It has been my experience that folks who

have no vices have very few virtues.
Abraham Lincoln
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is a very hard undertaking to seek to

please everybody.
Publilius Syrus
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You must have long-range goals to keep

from being frustrated by short-term
failures.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“I know he can get the job,

but can he do the job?”
Mr. Watori
in the movie “Joe Versus the Volcano”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nothing is a waste of time

if you use the experience wisely.
Rodin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Take time
to work on the business,
not just in the business.
Richard Rhodes
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Unless both sides win,

no agreement can be permanent.
Jimmy Carter
“
Pragmatic Marketing
An ounce of performance is worth pounds

of promises.
Mae West
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Life is a compromise
between fate and free will.
Elbert Hubbard
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In every work of genius we recognize our

own rejected thoughts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Personally I’m always ready to learn,

although I do not always like being taught.
Sir Winston Churchill
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I believe business will come back when

we get some products that people want to
buy.
Charles Kettering
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Our knowledge is a
little island
in a great ocean of
non-knowledge.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Wit is a treacherous dart. It is perhaps the

only weapon with which it is possible to
stab oneself in one's own back.
Geoffrey Bocca
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The conventional view serves to protect

us from the painful job of thinking.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Reach your buyers

with high rankings.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Since he'd only been with Texas

Instruments a few months, Jack Kilby
wasn't eligible for paid leave when almost
all the employees went on vacation. Left
alone to experiment, unencumbered by
distractions, Kilby came up with the
microchip and changed the world.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The nice thing about standards is that

there are so many of them to choose
from.
Andrew S. Tanenbaum
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In order to be irreplaceable
one must always be different.
Coco Chanel
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The test of innovation lies not in its

novelty, its scientific content, or its
cleverness. It lies in its success in the
marketplace.
Peter Drucker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Excellence is lost sight of in the hunger

for sudden performance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Users don’t read the manual.
Joel Spolsky
www.joelonsoftware.com
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Documentation
is the evidence
of poor design.
Donald Norman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Poor is the student who does not surpass

his teacher.
Leonardo da Vinci
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When there is no knowledge, ignorance

calls itself knowledge.
George Bernard Shaw
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The thrill of being right is the engineer’s

reward.
David Bank
Breaking Windows
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that

everything is an emergency.
Natalie Goldberg,
Wild Mind
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Would you tell your mother?

That's my only rule of ethics.
Tom Siebel
at the 2002 Digital Frontiers Conference
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Each year, one should pause to take

stock, to ask:
Where am I going?
What am I becoming?
What do I wish to do and become?
Louis L’Amour
“
Pragmatic Marketing
TERABYTE
2 to the 40th power (1,099,511,627,776)
bytes. This is approximately 1024
gigabytes.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Man's mind
once stretched by a new idea
never regains its original dimension.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
“
Pragmatic Marketing
PETABYTE
2 to the 50th power
(1,125,899,906,842,624) bytes. A
petabyte is equal to 1,024 terabytes.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The nicest thing about not planning is

that failure comes as a complete
surprise and is not preceded by a
period of worry and depression.
John Preston
Boston College
“
Pragmatic Marketing
EXABYTE
2 to the 60th power
(1,152,921,504,606,846,976) bytes. An
exabyte is equal to 1,024 petabytes.

proven strategies,

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Many entrepreneurs are like the chef who

cooks dishes based on the available
ingredients rather creating a dish that
customers want to buy.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
ZETTABYTE
2 to the 70th power
(1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424) bytes.
A zettabyte is equal to 1,024 exabytes.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When you survive by reinventing yourself

every day,
it’s tough to differentiate
on a product difference alone.
Jack Trout,
Differentiate or Die
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Grok (grôk)
tr.v. Slang grok·ked, grok·king, groks
To understand profoundly through
intuition or empathy.
Robert A. Heinlein,
from Stranger in a Strange Land
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Software bugs and glitches cost the U.S.

economy about $59.5 billion a year.
According to a 2002 study by the

U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What can a sales person say to

somebody to get them to buy a product
that they will use every day
if they don’t like it?
Nothing.
Larry Ellison
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A poorly articulated set of “messages” has

the power to turn buyers away from your
organization.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
The only way you can succeed in

business is to find places where
conventional wisdom is wrong.
Larry Ellison
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You cannot innovate by copying.
Larry Ellison
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Companies don't innovate;

people do.
Jeff Hawkins,
creator of Palm Pilot and Handspring
“
Pragmatic Marketing
For decades, tuned out companies have

focused on two ways of getting noticed:
buy your way in with expensive
advertising or beg your way in by courting
the media.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof?

It’s a proof. A proof is a proof. And when
you have a good proof, it’s because it’s
proven.
Jean Chrétien,
Prime Minister of Canada
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Think before you act,

if you have time.
A military maxim
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Publish your way in with great content

that your buyers want to consume.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
Great brands
are earned,
not bought.
Scott Cook
Intuit
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Tuned in companies reach people who

are eager to buy their products and
services without being coerced.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
Branding is a way of helping non-

knowledgeable customers make a low-
risk buying decision for a commodity
product with little inherent differentiation.
Michael Fischler
Markitek
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We built this company from the customer

back, not from the company out.
Lou Gerstner, IBM

management roles &

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Lou Gerstner traveled over 1,000,000

miles to visit customers during his nine
years as CEO of IBM.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Strive to become a market-driven

enterprise rather than an internally
focused, process-driven enterprise.
Lou Gerstner, IBM
“
Pragmatic Marketing
While tuned out organizations spend the big

bucks on direct mail and advertising, buyers
are busy using the web to make product and
service decisions.

“
Pragmatic Marketing
I have always believed you cannot run a

successful enterprise from behind a desk.
Lou Gerstner, IBM
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A good search is “what you want, when

you want it” as opposed to “everything
you could ever want, even when you
don't.”
Marissa Mayer,
Google product manager
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When I decide just exactly who the song

is a-going to help out, I can really scribble
‘er down in a hurry.
Woody Guthrie
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is astonishing what
foolish things one can believe
if one thinks too long alone.
John Maynard Keynes
“
Pragmatic Marketing
For most salespeople,

the opposite of talking is
waiting to talk.
Rick Page
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When you see your competitor drowning,

grab a fire hose
and put it in his mouth.
Ray Kroc
Did you know?


great material.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Manage by principle,
not procedure.
Lou Gerstner, IBM
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Reengineering is like starting a fire on

your head and then putting it out with a
hammer.
A tired executive
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Customers never appreciate your

products as much as you do.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
quidnunc
\KWID-nunk\
noun: a person who seeks to know all the
latest news or gossip; busybody
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To be uncertain is to
be uncomfortable,
but to be certain
is to be ridiculous.
Chinese proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If we built factories as badly as we build

marketing campaigns, this country would
be in shambles.
Seth Godin,
Unleashing the Ideavirus
“
Pragmatic Marketing
duplicity \doo-PLIH-suh-tee\
noun: the disguising of true intentions by
deceptive words or action
(Is that what you do in positioning?)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Rhetoric doesn't get you anywhere. You

have to focus on the benefits that you can
deliver to customers.
Mike McCue
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You can have brilliant ideas but if you

can’t get them across, your ideas won’t
get you anywhere.
Lee Iacocca
Framework?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The difference between the right word

and the almost right word is the difference
between lightning and the lightning bug.
Mark Twain
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It had always made sense to me to build a

business based on what people really
wanted, rather than guessing what we
thought they might want.
Michael Dell
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The best decision is the right decision.

The next best decision is the wrong
decision. The worst decision is no
decision.
Scott McNealy
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You don’t build the product for yourself.

You have to know what the people want
and build it for them.
Walt Disney
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Outsourcing is problematic: when

everything works perfectly, you don't
notice, but when things go wrong, it's
much harder to get them fixed.
Joel Spolsky
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you’re a marketer who doesn’t know

how to invent, design, influence, adapt,
and ultimately discard products, then
you’re no longer a marketer. You’re
deadwood.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
How can you market yourself as “more

bland than the leading brand?”
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Market-driven design builds the success

of the product’s marketing into the product
itself.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
importunate
\im-POR-tyoo-nit\
adjective: troublesomely urgent; overly
persistent in request or demand
Did you know?
management survey.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is not the employer that pays wages.

It is the product that pays wages.
Henry Ford
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Bad decisions
are the result of guessing.
Michael Hammer
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If we do not change our direction,

we are likely to end up
where we are headed.
Chinese proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You simply cannot be successful in

marketing if you’re not talking to
customers.
Kristin Zhivago
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It's not about winning every battle. It's

about building a great business from the
ground up.
Scott Lutz
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The day we think we've got it made…

that's the day we'd better start worrying
about going out of business.
Rich Teerlink, CEO

Harley-Davidson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Maintaining a complicated life is a great

way to avoid changing it.
Elaine St. James

simplicity guru
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Creative talent is the scarcest resource

on the planet.
Rusty Rueff,
Electronic Arts
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I believe I'm growing

skeptical of cynicism.
Chuck Lorre
Product Management


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Weltschmerz
/VELT-shmerts/
noun (German): mental depression or
apathy caused by comparison of the
actual state of the world with an ideal
state.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The people in the trenches are the ones

in the best position to make critical
decisions. It's up to leaders to give those
people the freedom and the resources
that they need.
Martin Sorrell
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The way to gain a good reputation

is to endeavor to be
what you desire to appear.
Socrates
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The fundamental problem is that

technologists know nothing about
markets, and markets know nothing about
technology.
Ian C. MacMillan
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Civilization advances by extending the

number of important operations which we
can perform without thinking about them.
Alfred North Whitehead
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I have made this letter longer than usual,

only because I have not had the time to
make it shorter.
Blaise Pascal
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If it’s not fun, don’t do it;

it’s time to get another job.
Alan Webber
Fast Company
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Love what you do. No matter what you

do, many days will stink. But when your
work allows you to become the person
you want to become, you can deal with it.
Mike Gallagher
Fast Company
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Life is long.
The problem is that we don’t know how to
spend our time wisely.
So we burn it.
Carlo Petrini
Did you know?

available.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Hire character; train skill.
Peter Schutz
“
Pragmatic Marketing
oligopsony
\ah-luh-GAHP-suh-nee\
noun: a market situation in which a few
buyers exert a disproportionate influence
on the market.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“She analyzes synergies,

or synergizes analogies…
or some such thing.”
“Father Brian Finn” (Edward Norton)

in “Keeping the Faith”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The key is not to build a better mousetrap,

but to find a way to eliminate a mouse
problem for the customer.
Warren Talbot
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People refer to Martin guitars as the

American Stradivarius. And I sure feel a
lot better about that than when I hear
people who say, “it’s the Cadillac of
guitars!” I usually cringe.
Do you have any idea what Cadillac
quality is like these days?
C. F. Martin IV
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Product managers are in charge of

whipping up all the other departments and
getting them to work together. This is to
make sure that the product gets pulled
forward by a coordinated team of horses,
rather than torn apart by horses running in
different directions.
Donald S Passman
All You Need to Know About the Music Business
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There's a difference between being busy

and being productive.
Kristen Lippincott
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Little minds are interested in the

extraordinary; great minds, in the
commonplace.
Elbert Hubbard
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The forgotten aspect of creativity

is discipline.
John Riccitiello
Electronic Arts
want to buy.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
trichotillomania
\trih-kuh-tih-luh-MAY-nee-uh\
noun: an abnormal desire to pull
out one's hair
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Thinking too far ahead is

a waste of time.
Bruce Pandolfini
chess master
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If a project fails,
and we keep working on it,
has it really failed?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Talk to unhappy customers.
Linda Sanford, IBM
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Simple doesn’t mean stupid.
Andy Hunt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Competitiveness is more about doing

what customers value than doing what
you think you’re good at.
Clayton Christensen
The Innovator’s Solution
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Learn to speak
from the customer's view.
Ranjan Acharya
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The love of handoffs

is the root of all evil.
Michael Hammer
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Differentiation for
differentiation’s sake
is a waste of time.
Sergio Zyman
The End of Advertising As We Know It
Did you know?

have?

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Marketing is not about trash and trinkets;

it’s about selling.
It’s not an art; it’s a science.
Sergio Zyman
The End of Marketing As We Know It
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The goal of advertising is to sell more

stuff to more people more often for more
money.
Sergio Zyman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Brands give buyers a way to tell one

nearly generic product from another.
Sergio Zyman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Quality is assumed.
Sergio Zyman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Being different only works if your

customers actually care about the
differences.
Sergio Zyman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To loyal customers,
price is no longer a
dominant motivating factor.
Sergio Zyman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The biggest marketing trend today is “Me

Too!”
Sergio Zyman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
malapropism
\MAL-uh-prah-pih-zuhm\
noun: the usually unintentionally
humorous misuse or distortion of a word
or phrase; especially the use of a word
sounding somewhat like the one intended
but ludicrously wrong in the context
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Sales and Finance have an amazing

capability to suffer from instant amnesia.
Keith Boswell
embrace.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If a team has no soul,

you're just wasting your time.
Bob Ladouceur
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Meetings waste time

and sap people's energy.
Joe Weller
CEO, Nestle USA
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When you build a startup,

the whole thing is about passion.
JoMei Chang
CEO, Vitria Technology
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When the going gets too tough,

the smart get lost.
Robert Byrne
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A life spent making mistakes is not only

more honorable but more useful than a
life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Your success when working with difficult

peers and difficult people
in positions of power all comes down to
attitude—yours.
John Hoover
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We spend so much of our time at work, it

is very important to love what you do for a
living.
Bob Page
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you think your boss is stupid,

remember: you probably wouldn't have a
job if he was smarter.
Albert Grant
“
Pragmatic Marketing
All ideas must have passionate advocates

behind them.
Thomas Davenport
Did you know?



and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
CRM systems are like chewing gum in

your hair: easy to get in and difficult to get
out.
David Meerman Scott
“
Pragmatic Marketing
sesquipedalian
\ses-kwuh-puh-DAIL-yun\ adjective:
1. having many syllables
2. using long words
Is your product positioning sesquipedalian?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What people value and the way that they

interact with a product goes beyond price.
Craig Vogel
“
Pragmatic Marketing
This notion that you've got to be

connected at all times is just plain crazy.
Garry Hare, CEO

Fathom Pictures
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You don't learn when you're talking.
Watts Wacker
CEO, FirstMatter
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You cannot own customers

unless you earn them.
Nancy Kramer
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The only thing that is more important than

optimism is the capacity to pull the plug
on a bad idea.
Professor Robert Sutton,

Stanford Engineering School
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Success means never letting the

competition define you. Instead, you have
to define yourself based on a point of view
you care deeply about.
Tom Chappell
“
Pragmatic Marketing
True faith is when you believe in a vision

and are willing to follow an imperfect
person and to tolerate imperfect execution
and imperfect results.
Michael Saylor
MicroStrategy

execution.

book.
and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
cavil \KAV-il\
noun(intransitive sense):
to raise trivial and frivolous objections
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There's only one thing worse than a man

who doesn't have strong likes and
dislikes, and that's the man who has
strong likes and dislikes without the
courage to voice them.
Tony Randall
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Hire slowly; fire quickly.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Habits change by changing habits.
Sam Decker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You already know the answers.

You just don't want to hear them
from yourself.
Sunny Vanderbeck
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In order to have judgment, you have to

have knowledge and experience.
Nancy Pelosi (D, California)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We need some ability which allows us to

envision the objective from afar, and this
ability is intuition.
Henri Poincaré
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you're building a product or delivering a

service that solves a real problem, you
can do well and grow fast.
Marina Hatsopoulos
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Deal with the world the way it is,

not the way you wish it was.
John Chambers
Did you know?
Titles are a mess!

requirements.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you can't describe what you are

doing as a process, you don't know
what you are doing.
W. Edwards Deming
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Too many people have copied too many

other people's best practices.
Ali Kasikci
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The Three Bricklayers:

The first says, “I’m laying bricks,”
the second says, “I’m making a wall,” and
the third says,
“I’m building a cathedral.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There's no correlation between how good

your idea is and how likely your
organization will be to embrace it.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
neophilia \nee-uh-FILL-ee-uh\
noun: love of or enthusiasm for what is
new or novel
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You have to have initiative and vision, but

you also have to figure out how to make it
work in the real world and make real
money.
Monica Luechtefeld,
Office Depot
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Tsongas Dictum:
No one ever said on his deathbed that he
regretted spending too little time at the
office.
Paul Tsongas
“
Pragmatic Marketing
That's a good question.

Let me try to evade you.
Paul Tsongas
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Let's try winning and see what it feels like.

If we don't like it, we can go back to our
traditions.
Paul Tsongas


office.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In a truly market-driven company,

decisions are based on data… so the
person with the best data wins.
Scott Cook
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I think the underlying cause of

too much email is mistrust.
Nathan Zeldes
Intel
“
Pragmatic Marketing
superfluous \soo-PER-floo-us\
1. exceeding what is sufficient or

necessary : extra
2. not needed : unnecessary
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Occam’s razor:
All other things being equal,
the simplest solution is the best."
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I must decline your invitation owing to a

subsequent engagement.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The past is a source of knowledge, and

the future is a source of hope.
Stephen Ambrose
“
Pragmatic Marketing
magniloquent \mag-NIL-uh-kwunt\
adjective: speaking in or characterized by
a high-flown often bombastic style or
manner
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I am convinced that if the rate of change

inside an organization is less than the rate
of change outside, the end is in sight.
Jack Welch
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Help people, doing what you love, and the

money will follow.
Kristin Zhivago
Did you know?

management.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When you hit a wrong note,

it's the next note that makes it
good or bad.
Miles Davis
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Innovation often originates outside

existing organizations, in part because
successful organizations acquire a
commitment to the status quo and a
resistance to ideas that might change it.
Nathan Rosenberg
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Anyone who acquires deep expertise

does so at the expense of breadth.
Andrew Hargadon
How Breakthroughs Happen
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To a child with a hammer,

everything looks like a nail.
Abraham Maslow
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I should not talk so much about myself if

there were anybody else whom I knew as
well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this
theme by the narrowness of my
experience.
Henry David Thoreau
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There's no substitute for innovation, but

innovation is no substitute for being in
touch.
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Truth is stranger than fiction because

fiction has to make sense.
Rod Machado
“
Pragmatic Marketing
vacuous \VAK-yuh-wus\
adjective
1. emptied of or lacking content
2. marked by lack of ideas or intelligence;
stupid, inane
Does this word describe your positioning?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The goal is to build lifelong affiliation.
Katie Weiser
Deloitte Consulting
x

product success.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A word to the wise ain’t necessary; it's the

stupid ones that need the advice.
Bill Cosby
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Those who invent something are always

the last to part with it.
Lester Thurow
“
Pragmatic Marketing
obdurate \AHB-duh-rut\
1. stubbornly persistent in wrongdoing;

2. resistant to persuasion or softening
influences
Is this anyone you know?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Confidence is the feeling you have before

you understand the
situation.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Success consists of going from failure to

failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There will always, one can assume, be

need for some selling. But the aim of
marketing is to make selling superfluous.
Peter Drucker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The aim of marketing is to know and

understand the customer so well that the
product or service fits him and sells itself.
Peter Drucker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Those who take seriousness seriously

and joking only as fun have
misunderstood both poorly.
Piet Hein
Danish poet
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There is nothing so useless as doing

efficiently that which should not be done
at all.
Peter Drucker
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Unbridled creativity isn't

a complete business solution.
Durwin Sharp
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You'll do a better job if you have other

things going on in your life.
John Beatrice
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I love deadlines.
I like the whooshing sound they make as
they fly by.
Douglas Adams
author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We can help a product that has value. We

can't help a product that's schlock.
David Balter
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde

Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the
ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is
taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll
raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the
huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef,
but the wrod as a wlohe.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
With the utmost respect, I must, if asked

for my opinion, tell you that I regard your
account as rubbish.
John Keynes
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Strategy without tactics is the slowest

route to victory. Tactics without strategy is
the noise before defeat.
Sun Tzu
Chinese General
circa 500 BC
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The best ideas probably don't

occur when everybody is sitting around a
table.
Adrian Caddy,
Creative Director, Imagination Ltd
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you're able to listen to customers from

their perspective, not everything they say
will make sense. But you'll know more
about what you have to do because of it.
Peter van Stolk
Reach your buyers

with high rankings.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People can't bear to miss a call.

Everybody thinks the next call can be
something really exciting. And getting so
many calls proves social success. It fulfills
a fundamental insecurity.
Christine Hannis
BBDO Europe
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You cannot sell a man who isn’t listening;

word of mouth is the best medium of all;
and dullness won’t sell your product, but
neither will irrelevant brilliance.
Bill Bernbach
DDB Advertising
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Advertising doesn't create a product

advantage. It can only convey it.
Bill Bernbach
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It's hard to muster

the courage to say ‘no.’
Roy Earle, VP, Etec Systems Inc
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It’s important to start meetings promptly.

That way, people will make every effort to
be on time; and anyway, it’s the polite
thing to do.
General Chuck Horner, USAF
“
Pragmatic Marketing
marplot \MAHR-plaht\
noun: one who frustrates or ruins a plan
or undertaking by meddling
Is this anyone you know?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
One of the greatest discoveries a man

makes, one of his greatest
surprises, is to find he can do what he
was afraid he couldn't do.
Henry Ford
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Making promises and keeping them is a

great way to build a brand.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The fastest way to succeed is to double

your failure rate.
Thomas Watson, Sr
Founder, IBM
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Your best customers are worth far more

than your average customers.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
paragon \PAIR-uh-gahn\
noun: a model of excellence or perfection
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Share of wallet is easier, more profitable

and ultimately more effective a measure
than share of market.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Companies that target their products at

the circumstances in which customers
find themselves, rather than at the
customers themselves, are those that can
launch predictably successful products.
Clayton Christensen
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Marketing begins
before the product is created.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
As markets, as workers, we wonder why

you're not listening. You seem to be
speaking a different language. Hey, you,
you, I’m talking to you.
From the “Gluetrain” Manifesto
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic.

Marketing is about far more than that.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The new phone book's here! The new

phone book's here! This is the kind of
spontaneous publicity I need. My name in
print. That really makes somebody.
Things are going to start happening to me
now.
“Navin R. Johnson” (Steve Martin)

in “The Jerk”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Brands are hollow words

into which marketers
stuff meaning.
Clayton Christensen

proven strategies,

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The average American receives more

than 3,000 marketing messages a day.
Dawn Hudson
Pepsi
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Low price is a great way to sell a

commodity. That’s not marketing, though;
that’s efficiency.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The most fundamental form of human

stupidity is forgetting what we were trying
to do in the first place.
Friedrich Nietzsche
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Conversations among the members of

your marketplace happen whether you
like it or not. Good marketing encourages
the right sort of conversations.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When trouble arises and things look bad,

there is always one individual who
perceives a solution and is willing to take
command. Very often, that individual is
crazy.
Dave Barry
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Products that are remarkable

get talked about.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Marketing is the way your people answer

the phone, the typesetting on your bills,
and your returns policy.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
meme \MEEM\
noun: an idea, behavior, style, or usage
that spreads from person to person within
a culture
(how market driven thinking spreads)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You can’t fool all the people, not even

most of the time. And people, once
unfooled, talk about the experience.
Seth Godin
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you're frightened of making a mistake,

you won't make a thing.
John Taylor,
Director of Design, GM's APEx
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Knowing what to do is very, very different

than actually doing it.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Companies need to come down from their

Ivory Towers and talk to the teeming
refuse of consumers.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you are marketing from a fairly static

annual budget, you’re viewing marketing
as an expense. Good marketers realize
that marketing is an investment.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Tchotchke” comes from the Yiddish

“tshatshke,” and ultimately from a now-
obsolete Polish word, “czaczko.”
“Tchotchke” is a pretty popular word these
days, but it wasn't commonly used in
English until the 1970s.
“Tchotchke” is pronounced “CHAHCH-kuh”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a

planned, thoughtful exercise that started a
long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re
done.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No one really listens to anyone else

and if you try it for a while
you'll see why.
Mignon McLaughlin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People rarely buy what they need. They

buy what they want.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The less you know,

the more you believe.
Bono

management roles &

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Some people get frustrated by change

and get left behind.
Colum Slevin, ILM
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You can hype a questionable product for

a little while, but you'll never build an
enduring business.
Victor Kiam
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Good marketers measure.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one

of the most insanely idiotic things I have
ever heard. At no point in your rambling,
incoherent response were you even close
to anything that could be considered a
rational thought. Everyone in this room is
now dumber for having listened to it.
“Principal Max Anderson”

in the movie “Billy Madison”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Good marketers tell a story.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
flippant \FLIP-unt\
adjective: lacking proper respect or
seriousness
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and

impatient. Start with that and you’ll be
pleasantly surprised
by what you find.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Innovation isn't the key to economic

growth. Management is the key to
economic growth.
Howard Anderson,
founder of Yankee Group
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Things do not just happen;

things are made to happen.
John F. Kennedy
Did you know?


great material.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The key to evangelism is a great product.

It is easy, almost unavoidable, to catalyze
evangelism for a great product.
It is hard, almost impossible, to catalyze
evangelism for crap.
Guy Kawasaki
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Honesty may be the best policy but it's

important to remember that apparently, by
elimination, dishonesty is the second-best
policy.
George Carlin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Marketing that works is marketing that

people choose to notice.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Choose your customers. Fire the ones

that hurt your ability to deliver the right
story to the others.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are two kinds of companies.

Companies that work to lower prices (like
Amazon, most of the time) and
companies that work to raise prices (like
the music industry, all of the time).
Jeff Bezos
Amazon.com
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A product for everyone rarely reaches

much of anyone.
Seth Godin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Companies attempting to “position”

themselves first need to take a position.
Optimally, it should relate to something
their market actually cares about.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Some people like my advice so much that

they frame it upon the wall instead of
using it.
Gordon R. Dickson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Stressed
spelled backward is
desserts.
Coincidence?
Framework?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If one took no chances, one would not fly

at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the
chances one takes.
Charles Lindbergh
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Don't be afraid to see what you see.
Ronald Reagan
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Facts are stubborn things.
Ronald Reagan
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Communism won't work because people

like to own stuff.
Frank Zappa
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Creativity is allowing yourself

to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep.
Scott Adams
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I

will show you a failure.
Thomas Edison
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Goodwill is the one and only

asset that competition cannot undersell or
destroy.
Marshall Field
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If Columbus had had an advisory

committee, he'd probably still be at the
dock.
Arther Goldberg
former Supreme Court Justice
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To get something done, a committee

should consist of no more than three
people, two of whom are absent.
Robert Copeland
Did you know?
management survey.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Those who cannot change their minds

cannot change anything.
George Bernard Shaw
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To love what you do

and feel that it matters—
how could anything be more fun?
Katherine Graham
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The man who follows the crowd will

usually get no further than the crowd. The
man who walks alone is likely to find
himself in places no one has ever been.
Alan Ashley-Pitt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Any darn fool can make something

complex; it takes a genius to make
something simple.
Pete Seeger
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are two ways to live your life. One

is as though nothing is a miracle. The
other is as though everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Words are plentiful;

deeds are precious.
Lech Walesa
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When you buy,

use your eyes and your mind,
not your ears.
Czech proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Don't take yourself too seriously.

And don't be too serious about not taking
yourself too seriously.
Howard Ogden
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Whether you think

that you can
or that you can't,
you are usually right.
Henry Ford
Product Management


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Don't put a limit on what can be

accomplished.
Christopher Reeve
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Carpe diem,
quam minimum credula a postero.
("Seize the day, and put the least possible
trust in tomorrow.”)
Horace
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it

is necessary that at least once in your life
you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
Rene Descartes
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Plan for the future because that’s where

you are going to spend the rest of your
life.
Mark Twain
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I like work. It fascinates me.

I can sit and look at it for hours.
Jerome K Jerome
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I'm not good in groups.

It's difficult to work in a group when you're
omnipotent.
"Q”
ST: TNG
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Yes, we have a dress code.

You have to dress.
Scott McNealy
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It's this whole gung-ho super-organism

thing that I just can't get. I try, but I just
don't get it. What is it--I'm supposed to do
everything for the colony?
What about my needs?
“Z” (Woody Allen)

Antz
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I had to make some optimistic

assumptions to meet the revenue target.
In week three, we're visited by an alien
named D'utox Inag who offers to share
his advanced technology.
“Dilbert”
Did you know?

available.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
"We can dispense with the pleasantries,

Commander. I am here to get you back
on schedule."
"Darth Vader"
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Police-mentality planners design

workplaces the way they would prisons:
optimized for containment at minimal cost.
Tom DeMarco
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In an information economy, the most

valuable company assets drive
themselves home every night. If they are
not treated well, they do not return the
next morning.
Peter Chang
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Cubicles have become such an icon of

nasty workplaces that it's shocking that
the companies who manufacture them still
have the chutzpah to pretend that they're
efficient, productive, and pleasant.
Joel Spolsky
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Today's open plan office is a wasteland. It

saps vitality, blocks talent, frustrates
accomplishment. It is the daily scene of
unfulfilled intentions and failed effort.
Robert Propst
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Arranged row upon row in air-conditioned

rooms, waited upon by crisp, young,
white-shirted men who move softly among
them like priests serving in a shrine, the
computers go about their work quietly
and, for the most part, unseen by the
public.
Time Magazine in 1965
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Accomplishing the impossible means only

that the boss will add it to your regular
duties.
Doug Larson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
First question in the Management Quiz:

Do you believe that anything you don't
understand must be easy to do?
Scott Adams
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A product manager can be defined as

someone who has all of the responsibility
and none of the power.
Guy Kawasaki
want to buy.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The ablest brains did not climb to the top

of the stairs. Seniority and society were
the dominant factors in army promotion.
Deportment counted a great deal. Brains
came a bad fourth.
David Lloyd George
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Hard work is
damn near as overrated
as monogamy.
Huey P Long
“
Pragmatic Marketing
One only needs two tools in life:

WD-40 to make things go
and duct tape to make them stop.
G M Weilacher
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Technology is dominated by two types of

people: those who understand what they
do not manage, and those who manage
what they do not understand.
"Archibald Putt”
Research/Development Magazine
January 1976
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Individual Contributor:
An employee who does the work.
Juergen Rudnick
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There is a computer disease that anybody

who works with computers knows about.
It's a very serious disease and it interferes
completely with the work. The trouble with
computers is that you play with them.
Richard Feynman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
One of the advantages of being disorderly

is that one is constantly making exciting
discoveries.
A A Milne
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In a world where we are forced to conform

to society, it is necessary to have
personal chaos.
Thomas Armstong
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In all large corporations, there is a

pervasive fear that someone somewhere
is having fun with a computer on company
time.
John C Dvorak
Did you know?

have?

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If a company won't trust me to use the

Internet effectively,
I don't care to work for them.
Mike Gunderloy
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Whenever you hear the phrase “lean and

mean” replace it with what it really
connotes: failing and frightened.
Tom DeMarco
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We're all working harder and faster. But

unless we're having fun,
the transformation doesn't work.
Jack Welch
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Treating your rocket scientist employees

as if they were still in kindergarten is not
an isolated phenomenon. Almost every
company has some kind of incentive
program that is insulting and demeaning.
Joel Spolsky
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We trained hard but it seemed that every

time we were beginning to form into
teams, we would be reorganized. I was to
learn later in life that we tend to meet any
new situation by reorganizing.
Gaius Petronius Arbiter

(circa 27-66 AD)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
And what a wonderful method

reorganization can be for creating the
illusion of progress while producing
confusion, inefficiency and
demoralization.
Gaius Petronius Arbiter

(circa 27-66 AD)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you want creative workers,

give them enough time to play.
John Cleese
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till

you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.
Bill Gates
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never underestimate the power of stupid

people in large groups.
embrace.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You needed a cool name to put on a T-

shirt, and you needed a T-shirt to give to
people. It was part of getting people
excited enough to work 70 hours a week.
Erich Ringewald
Apple
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Poor management can increase software

costs more rapidly than any other factor.
Barry Boehm
“
Pragmatic Marketing
By working faithfully eight hours a day,

you may get to be a boss and work twelve
hours a day.
Robert Frost
“
Pragmatic Marketing
An engineer will not be motivated to make

a shareholder rich.
Peter Drucker
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The squeaky wheel may get the most oil,

but it is also the first to be replaced.
Marilyn Vos Savant
“
Pragmatic Marketing
All good work is done

in defiance of management.
Bob Woodward
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you notice a lot of attention being given

to process improvement, it's a sure sign
that all the smart employees have left the
company and those who remain are
desperately trying to find a “process” that
is so simple that the boneheads who
remain can handle it.
Scott Adams
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Some folks can look so busy doing nothin'

that they seem indispensable.
Kin Hubbard
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To do great work, a man must be very idle

as well as very industrious.
Samuel Butler
Did you know?



and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is necessary to work, if not from

inclination, at least from despair.
Everything considered, work is less
boring than amusing oneself.
Charles Baudelaire
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Malingering is a subject upon which I

have sometimes thought of writing a
monograph.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Your role may be thankless, but if you're

willing to give it your all, you might just
bring success to those who outlast you.
E L Kersten
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The country is accustomed to having

foreign workers come here for
unpleasant, low-paying jobs.
Why shouldn't programming go the same
way?
Richard Etter
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People who work sitting down get paid

more than people who work standing up.
Ogden Nash
“
Pragmatic Marketing
At that time I did not yet know the

frightening anesthetic power of company
papers, their capacity to hobble, dowse,
and dull every leap of intuition and every
spark of talent.
Primo Levi
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Anyone can make a project fail through

sheer luck. Only the savvy know how to
do it by design.
Naomi Karten
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We each have only enough strength to

complete those assignments that we are
fully convinced are important.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Deprived of meaningful work, men and

women lose their reason for existence;
they go stark, raving mad.
Fyodor Dostoevski

execution.

book.
and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The bulk of the causes of low quality and

low productivity belong to the system and
thus lie beyond the power of the work
force.
W Edwards Deming
“
Pragmatic Marketing
As regards intellectual work, it remains a

fact, indeed, that great decisions in the
realms of thought and momentous
discoveries and solutions of problems are
only possible to an individual working in
solitude.
Sigmund Freud
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There is no such thing as

group originality or
group creativity.
Edwin Land
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If your project doesn't work, look for the

part that you didn't think was important.
Arthur Bloch
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Status meetings can become a form of

structured harassment.
Patrick Bailey
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In some schools they have abolished

failing grades and they'll give you as
many times as you want to get the right
answer. This doesn't bear the slightest
resemblance to anything in real life.
Bill Gates
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Something is usable if it behaves exactly

as expected.
Joel Spolsky
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If we don't change direction soon, we'll

end up where we were going.
Professor Irwin Corey
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Everything popular is wrong.
Oscar Wilde
Did you know?
Titles are a mess!

requirements.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Experience is simply the name we give

our mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I dislike arguments of any kind.

They are always vulgar,
and often convincing.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The young are always ready to give to

those who are older than themselves the
full benefits of their inexperience.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Life is too important to be taken seriously.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure

and never simple.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The salesman knows nothing

of what he is selling, save that he is
charging a great deal too much for it.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Anyone can make the simple

complicated. Creativity is making the
complicated simple.
Charles Mingus
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Marketing is like bug spray. After a while

everyone’s immune to it and you have to
think of something totally different.
Antonio Bertone
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The trouble with having an open mind, of

course, is that people will insist on coming
along and trying to put things in it.
Terry Pratchett


office.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Education is what you get when you read

the fine print; experience is what you get
when you don't.
Pete Seeger
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Don't start an argument with somebody

who has a microphone when you don't.
Harlan Ellison
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Design consists of creating things for

clients who may not know what they want
until they see what you've done, then they
know exactly what they want but it's not
what you did.
Brian Sooy
creator of the typeface ‘Lucerna’
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In the end, the details of a matter are

important. The right and wrong of one's
way of doing things are found in trivial
matters.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Kludge: an ill-assorted collection of

poorly-matching parts, forming a
distressing whole.
Jackson W. Granholm
Datamation, 1962
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The one test of innovation is the value it

brings us, the result. Anything else is
just... showing off.
From an IBM television ad
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The main thing is to

keep the main thing
the main thing.
Dan Brown
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Beware the lollipop of mediocrity;

lick it once and you’ll suck forever.
Brian Wilson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Lay down thy packet,

now O friend,
and sleep.
Last line of a poem written by

Venton Cerf (co-inventor of TCP/IP)
when ARPANET closed down in 1990
Did you know?

management.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Green's Theorem:
For any story, in any group of people
there will be at least one person who has
not heard the story.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
verisimilitude
\ver-uh-suh-MIL-uh-tood; -tyood\
noun: the appearance of truth; the quality
of seeming to be true
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Life is just one damned thing after

another.
Elbert Hubbard
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is not who is right,

but what is right,
that is of importance.
Thomas Huxley
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What people say, what people do, and

what they say they do are entirely
different things.
Margaret Mead
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“As of tomorrow, employees will only be

able to access the building using
individual security cards. Pictures will be
taken next Wednesday, and employees
will receive their cards in two weeks.”
A clueless manager
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“E-mail is not to be used to pass on

information or data. It should be used only
for company business.”
A clueless manager
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“This project is so important we can't let

things that are more important interfere
with it.”
A clueless manager
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Doing it right is no excuse for not

meeting the schedule.”
A clueless manager
x

product success.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Teamwork is a lot of people

doing what I say.”
A clueless manager
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“We know that communication is a

problem but the company is not going to
discuss it with the employees.”
A clueless manager
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“What I need is an exact list of specific

unknown problems we might encounter."
A clueless manager
“
Pragmatic Marketing
cybrarian \sye-BRAIR-ee-un\
noun: a person whose job is to find,
collect, and manage information that is
available on the World Wide Web
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There is not enough time

to do all the nothing
we want to do.
Bill Watterson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
At Sony, we assume that all products of

our competitors have basically the same
technology, price, performance, and
features. Design is the only thing that
differentiates one product from another in
the marketplace.
Norio Ohga
Sony Corporation
“
Pragmatic Marketing
For every percent of sales

invested in product design,
profits rise by 3 to 4%.
John Howkins
The Creative Economy
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Perfection is finally attained not when

there is nothing left to add but when there
is nothing left to remove.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Whatever your current plan is,

if it’s looking a year out,
it probably really sucks.
Lisa Dusseault
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Unless you are

independently wealthy,
you must work to a schedule.
Watts Humphrey, IBM
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you don’t make your own schedule,

somebody else will. Then that person will
control your work.
Watts Humphrey, IBM
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I am discouraged by the number of

people working now who have not
bothered to learn the basics of IT—and
yet, without IT, there is no business.
Kristin Zhivago
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I have always found that plans are

useless, but planning is indispensable.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Any idiot can face a crisis,

it is this day-to-day living that wears you
out.
Anton Chekhov
“
Pragmatic Marketing
For some reason, I was stimulated by

marketing and fascinated with how
commercials would sell a product. So I
got my degree in marketing.
Scott “Carrot Top” Thompson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Opportunity is missed by most people

because it’s dressed in overalls and looks
like work.
Thomas Edison
“
Pragmatic Marketing
boondoggle /BOON-dah-gul/ noun
1. a braided cord worn by Boy Scouts as

a neckerchief slide, hatband, or ornament;
2. a wasteful or impractical project or
activity often involving graft
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When Microsoft looks at new ideas, they

don't evaluate whether the idea will move
the industry forward, they ask, “how will it
help us sell more copies of Windows?”
Bill Gates
Reach your buyers

with high rankings.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Sometimes ideas are born out of

necessity; you solve a problem for
yourself and you hopefully solve it for a
number of other people too.
Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you can’t explain it simply, you don't

understand it well enough.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You need to have thoughtful thoughts to

be a thought leader.
David Meerman Scott
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nothing in the world can take the place of

persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more
common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost
a proverb. Education will not; the world is full
of educated derelicts. Persistence and
determination alone are omnipotent.
Calvin Coolidge
“
Pragmatic Marketing
mythomania \mith-uh-MAY-nee-uh\
noun: an excessive or abnormal
propensity for lying and exaggerating
Sound like anyone you know?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Fall seven times; stand up eight.
Japanese proverb
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I’ve never stopped trying

and I’ve never tried stopping.
Dolly Parton
“
Pragmatic Marketing
He who hesitates is not only lost,

but miles from the next exit.
Unknown
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I don’t care what kind of business you’re

in, if you lose the customers, you’re dead.
Lee Iococca
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Most people have the will to win,

fewer have the will to prepare to win.
Bobby Knight
“
Pragmatic Marketing
sprachgefuhl
\SHPRAHKH-guh-fuel\
noun: an intuitive sense of what is
linguistically appropriate
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Murphy's Second Law: Everything takes

longer than you think.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Everybody gets so much information all

day long that they lose their common
sense.
Gertrude Stein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a

million keyboards could produce the
complete works of Shakespeare; now,
thanks to the internet, we know that is not
true.
Robert Wilensky
“
Pragmatic Marketing
obstinate \AHB-stuh-nut\
adjective: perversely adhering to an
opinion, purpose, or course in spite of
reason, arguments, or persuasion
Sound like anyone you know?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The trouble with you is

your lack of inconsistency.
Sid Hartman
Minneapolis sports columnist
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It turns out that “marketing” is just making

the product good enough that people
spread it on their own.
Blake Ross,
Creator of FireFox
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You will never “find” time

for anything.
If you want time,
you must make it.
Charles Bruxton

proven strategies,

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are two ways to get famous in

cyberspace: say something clever and
memorable or say something outrageous.
And unfortunately, it's a lot easier to be
outrageous than clever and memorable.
Paul Saffo
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Today is the tomorrow

you worried about yesterday,
and all is well.
Robert Carter
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You can learn a lot more from listening

than you can from talking. Take a seat,
shut your mouth, and don't argue back.
It’s physically impossible to listen with
your mouth open.
John Moe, radio host
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Murphy’s First Law:

Nothing is as easy as it looks.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
They talk most who have

the least to say.
Matthew Prior
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Murphy's Third Law:

If something can go wrong, it will.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Murphy's Fourth Law:

If there is a possibility that several things
can go wrong, then the one that will cause
the greatest damage will be the one to go
wrong.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Murphy's Fifth Law:

If anything just cannot go wrong,
it will anyway.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Murphy's Sixth Law:

If you perceive that there are four possible
ways in which a procedure can go wrong
and circumvent these, then a fifth way,
unprepared for, will promptly develop.
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Murphy's Seventh Law: Left to

themselves, things tend to go from bad to
worse.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Murphy's Eighth Law:

If everything seems to be going well, you
have obviously overlooked something.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We act as though comfort and luxury

were the chief requirements of life, when
all that we need to make us really happy
is something to be enthusiastic about.
Charles Kingsley
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Whatever you can do or dream you can,

begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and
magic in it. Begin it now.
Goethe
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you don't find it in the index,

look very carefully
through the entire catalog.
Sears, Roebuck, and Co. Consumer's Guide, 1897
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The universe is full of magical things

patiently waiting for our wits to grow
sharper.
Eden Phillpots
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Our major obligation is not to mistake

slogans for solutions.
Edward R. Murrow
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never express yourself more clearly than

you are able to think.
Neils Bohr
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Meetings are indispensable when you

don't want to do anything.

management roles &

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When all is said and done,

most of us like what we like and make up
reasons for it afterwards.
Soren F. Petersen
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Just because
I don't care
doesn't mean
I don't understand.
Homer Simpson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea,

when you have only one idea.
Emile-Auguste Chartier
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A ship is safe in harbor but

that’s not what ships are for.
William Shedd
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In the Beginning
there was nothing,
which exploded.
Terry Pratchett
“
Pragmatic Marketing
For what a man would like to be true, that

he more readily believes.
Francis Bacon
“
Pragmatic Marketing
restive \RES-tiv\ adjective
1. stubbornly resisting control; balky

2. marked by impatience or
uneasiness; fidgety
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Soon we will all face a choice between

what is right and
what is easy.
“Aldus Dumbledore”
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
“
Pragmatic Marketing
They who lack talent expect things to

happen without effort.
Eric Hoffer
Did you know?


great material.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Many important aspects of work are

invisible, not because they are hidden, but
because it doesn’t occur to anyone to pay
attention to them.
Karen Holtzblatt and Hugh Beyer

Contextual Design
“
Pragmatic Marketing
confabulate
\kun-FAB-yuh-layt\ verb
1 : to talk informally : chat

2 : to hold a discussion : confer
3 : to fill in gaps in memory by
fabrication
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Human beings were not meant to sit in

little cubicles staring at computer screens
all day, filling out useless forms and
listening to eight different bosses drone
on about mission statements.
Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston)

in“Office Space”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Everyone thinks of
changing the world
but no one thinks of
changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I have learned to use

the word “impossible”
with the greatest caution.
Wernher von Braun, rocket scientist
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We saw it as a really cool thing that we’d

like to actually own, and I guess we
reasonably thought that other people
would like to own it too.
Ted Wobber, DEC Research

(on a predecessor of the iPod)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I honestly believe that people of my

generation despise authenticity, mostly
because they’re all
so envious of it.
Chuck Klosterman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
One of the things wrong with the

computer industry today is that most of
the people running the companies don’t
love computers.
They don’t love what they create.
And people at Apple do.
Steve Jobs
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We had a reason for being that wasn’t just

about making money.
Jonathan Ive
head of industrial design at Apple
Designer of iPod and iMac
Framework?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We are not retreating. We are advancing

in another direction.
Douglas MacArthur
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I never cease being dumbfounded

by the unbelievable things
that people believe.
Leo Rosten
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The power of accurate observation

is commonly called cynicism
by those who have not got it.
George Bernard Shaw
“
Pragmatic Marketing
My specialty is
being right
when other people are wrong.
George Bernard Shaw
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When people are free

to do as they please,
they usually imitate each other.
Eric Hoffer
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A facility for quotation covers the absence

of original thought.
Dorothy L. Sayers
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Politics is the art of preventing people

from taking part in affairs which properly
concern them.
Paul Valery
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Advertising is the tax you pay for being

unremarkable.
Robert Stephens
founder of the Geek Squad
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To know that we know

what we know,
and that we do not know
what we do not know,
that is true knowledge.
Confucius
Did you know?
management survey.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You must
be the change
you wish to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The more you tighten your grip,

the more star systems
will slip through your fingers.
“Princess Leia”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Reality is that which,

when you stop believing in it,
doesn't go away.
Philip K. Dick
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Communication Breakdown,
It's always the same.
I'm having a nervous breakdown,
Drive me insane!
“Communication Breakdown”
Led Zeppelin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
One of the oldest human needs is having

someone to wonder where you are when
you don't come home at night.
Margaret Mead
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If we’re going to make this decision

based on opinions, we’re going to use my
opinion.
Jim Barksdale
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It’s the duty of the comedian to find out

where the line is drawn and cross it
deliberately.
George Carlin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No battle plan survives

contact with the enemy
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To create a new standard, it takes

something that's not just a little bit
different, it takes something that's really
new and really captures people's
imagination.
Bill Gates, 1983
Product Management


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Buddha said that all men have eighty-

three burdens. If we succeed in
eliminating one, we automatically acquire
another. The secret of life is to adjust to
eighty-three and avoid at all costs
acquiring the eighty-fourth.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
idée fixe
\ee-day-FEEKS\ : noun :
an idea that dominates one's mind
especially for a prolonged period :
obsession
“
Pragmatic Marketing
At the sneak preview of “The Wizard of

Oz” in 1939, producers debated about
removing one of the songs because it
seemed to slow things down. They finally
decided to leave it in. The song: “Over the
Rainbow.”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you’re not in control of your calendar,

you’re not in control.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To be or not to be.
That's not really a question.
Jean-Luc Godard
“
Pragmatic Marketing
innocuous
\ih-NAH-kyuh-wus\ : adjective :
not likely to give offense or to arouse
strong feelings or hostility : inoffensive,
insipid
Is your positioning innocuous?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
As long as people will accept crap, it will

be financially profitable to dispense it.”
Dick Cavett
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you take pride in what you do and put

out a great product, people will find you.
Tim Manners
“
Pragmatic Marketing
By the year 2040, the World Wide Web

will exceed humanity in processing power.
Kevin Kelly
Did you know?

available.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In 2008, the Web and its nodes

(including your computer)
uses 5% of the world’s power.
Kevin Kelly
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In order to create a great product,

you actually have to live with it.
Steve Horowitz
Google
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons

of explanation.
Saki
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Quality is when the customer returns and

the product doesn’t.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Quality is not an act; it is a habit.
Aristotle
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Quality means doing it right when no one

is looking.
Henry Ford
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Quality has to be caused, not controlled.
Phillip Crosby
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A project is one small step for the project

sponsor, one giant leap for the project
manager.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You can con a sucker into committing to

an impossible deadline, but you cannot
con him into meeting it.
want to buy.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
SPREZZATURA: a certain nonchalance,

so as to make whatever one does appear
to be without effort. It is the ability to
display an easy facility in accomplishing
difficult actions which hides the conscious
effort that went into them.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Why is it that we spend 12 months getting

our kids to walk and talk and then spend
the rest of their lives telling them to sit
down and be quiet?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Men, working together,

can accomplish anything.
Paul Brickhill
author of The Great Escape
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The best messages

resonate because they say what you've
been trying to articulate already.
Steve Johnson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Choosing the lesser of two evils

is still choosing evil.
Jerry Garcia
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you torture the data long enough,

it will confess to anything you want.
John Thompson
President of BestBuy.com
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Prolix \proh-LIKS\ (adjective)

: unduly prolonged or drawn out: too
long; marked by or using an excess of
words
Is your messaging prolix?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To hold a man responsible for

anything he does not control
is to behave with blind idiocy.
Robert A. Heinlein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
An anecdote is not a statistic.
D’Arcy Saltzmann
Did you know?

have?

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The singular of data is anecdote.
Amy Perfors
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The plural of "anecdote" is not "fact."
Cory Doctorow
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You don't want a product designed by

your customers; you want a product
inspired by your customers.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You just fulfilled the first rule of law

enforcement: make sure when your shift
is over you go home alive. Here endeth
the lesson.
"Jim Malone” (Sean Connery )

in “The Untouchables”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I get up every morning determined to both

change the world and have one hell of a
good time. Sometimes this makes
planning my day difficult.
E. B. White
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If we couldn't laugh,
we would all go insane.
Jimmy Buffett
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I like long walks, especially when they are

taken by people who annoy me.
Noel Coward
“
Pragmatic Marketing
lollygag
\LAH-lee-gag\ (verb)
: to spend time idly, aimlessly, or
foolishly : dawdle
I spend too much time lollygagging

on the internet. Do you?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
He doesn't think about things. He has

opinions, but no ideas.
Sue Grafton
embrace.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I am a personal optimist
but a skeptic about all else.
George Carlin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I won't insult your intelligence by

suggesting that you really believe what
you just said.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If the phone doesn’t ring, it’s me.
Jimmy Buffett
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When you encounter seemingly good

advice that contradicts other seemingly
good advice, ignore them both.
Al Franken
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Time is what we want most,

but what we use worst.
William Penn
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Active, successful natures act, not

according to the dictum ‘know thyself’,
but as if there hovered before them the
commandment: will a self and thou shalt
become a self.
Friedrich Nietzsche
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A person is what he
thinks about all day long.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Circumstances do not make a person,

they reveal him.
James Allen
“
Pragmatic Marketing
To apply general tools to specific

problems is to fail. You need to know the
market; you need to know the customers;
you need to know the limits of
manufacturing and the limits of your own
creative people.
Michael Crichton
Did you know?



and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The megalomaniac pleasure of creation

produces a type of elation which cannot
be compared with that experienced by
other mortals.
Edmund Berger
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There seems to be a deep instinct in

human beings for making everything
compulsory that isn't forbidden.
Robert A. Heinlein
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Opinions are cheap;

facts are expensive.
Andrew Neil
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Flibbertigibbet

\flib-er-tee-JIB-ut\ (noun):
a silly, flighty person
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Be obscure clearly.
E. B. White
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Listening, Designing, Coding, Testing.

That’s all there is to software. Anyone
who tells you different is selling
something.
Kent Beck
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I contradict myself.
I am large.
I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The world hates change yet it is the only

thing that has brought progress.
Charles Kettering
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you have too many nice people in your

marketing department, you are probably
headed for trouble.
Bill Davidow

execution.

book.
and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never promise more

than you can perform.
Publilius Syrus
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The successful professional for the

twenty-first century is either
a business-savvy technologist or
a technology-savvy businessperson.
Alan Cooper
“
Pragmatic Marketing
"Illiterate? Write for free help!"
“
Pragmatic Marketing
By age 20, today’s kids have spent

20,000 hours online, the same amount of
time a professional piano player would
have spent practicing.
Dr. Urs Gasser
“
Pragmatic Marketing
‘If it ain't broke, don't fix it’

is the slogan of the complacent, the
arrogant or the scared. It's an excuse for
inaction, a call to non-arms.
Colin Powell
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Build something people want.
Paul Graham
YCombinator
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What this country needs is more free

speech worth listening to.
Hansell B. Duckett
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Advertising is the price you pay for having

an unremarkable product or service.
Jeff Bezos
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Agile is often an attempt to manage our

executives rather than to be responsive to
the market.
Nainil Chheda
Did you know?
Titles are a mess!

requirements.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you have to write your ethics rules

down, you've already lost.
Tom Clancy
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Nobody will pay you to solve a non-

problem.
Vinod Khosla
Sun Microsystems
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Time spent looking back in anger

is time wasted.
Mary Stewart
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Strategy is deciding whose business you

are going to turn away.
David H. Maister
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A horse may pull the cart, but you do not

ask the horse where it wishes to go.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Always and never are two words you

should always remember never to use.
Wendell Johnson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you can find something everyone

agrees on, it's wrong.
Mo Udall
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never mistake activity for achievement.
John Wooden
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You couldn't see it if you saw it.
LaBoeuf
“True Grit”


office.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We don't want to let perfect be

the enemy of good.
Amy Kudwa
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A value proposition of 'increased

productivity' is the last refuge of
scoundrels.
April Dunford
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Fractious \FRAK-shus\
adjective: 1 : tending to be troublesome,
unruly; 2 : quarrelsome, irritable
“
Pragmatic Marketing
News is what somebody somewhere

wants to suppress; all the rest is
advertising.
Lord Northcliffe
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The art of leadership is saying no, not

yes. It is very easy to say ‘yes.’
Tony Blair
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The true measure of a man is how he

treats someone who can do him
absolutely no good.
Samuel Johnson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When everything is easy,

one quickly gets stupid.
Maxim Gorky
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The middle of the road is where the white

line is—and that's the worst place to
drive.
Robert Frost
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Do the best you can, and don’t take life

too serious.
Will Rogers
Did you know?

management.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Only those who will risk going too far can

possibly find out how far one can go.
T.S. Eliot
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It's not wise to violate rules until you know

how to observe them.
T.S. Eliot
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.
Emily Dickinson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We may encounter many defeats but we

must not be defeated.
Maya Angelou
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There's a world of difference between

truth and facts. Facts can obscure the
truth.
Maya Angelou
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There cannot be a stressful crisis next

week. My schedule is already full.
Henry Kissinger
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The shortest way to do many things is to

do only one thing at once.
Samuel Smiles
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No matter how short it is, a story should

have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Don’t forget the story. You can tell a story
in ten seconds.
Raoul Servais
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I like to do all the talking myself. It saves

time, and prevents arguments.
Oscar WIlde
x

product success.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When a person can no longer laugh at

himself, it is time for others to laugh at
him.
Thomas Szasz
“
Pragmatic Marketing
hyperbole
\hye-PER-buh-lee\
noun
: extravagant exaggeration
How much of your messaging is hyperbole?
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People only see what they are prepared

to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Do not say things. What you are stands

over you the while and thunders so that I
cannot hear what you say to the contrary.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
For any business,

Top line is vanity,
Bottom line is sanity,
Cash flow is reality.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
CREATIVITY is thinking up new things.

INNOVATION is doing new things.
Theodore Levitt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In the business world, the rearview mirror

is always clearer than the windshield.
Warren Buffett
“
Pragmatic Marketing
42.7% of all statistics are

made up on the spot.
Steven Wright
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You cannot bore someone into buying

your product.
David Ogilvy
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In matters of style, swim with the current;

in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
Thomas Jefferson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The longer you work on a story, the more

you can find yourself losing direction. No
detail is too small. You just don’t know
what your story is anymore.
Ed Cray
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When things aren’t working, think

“smarter” not “louder”.
Derek Sivers
“
Pragmatic Marketing
At the end of the day,

all you have is your friends.
Ariel Hyatt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Leadership is based on inspiration, not

domination; on cooperation, not
intimidation.
William Arthur Ward
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The single biggest problem in

communication is the illusion that it has
taken place.
George Bernard Shaw
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The more elaborate our means of

communication, the less we
communicate.
Joseph Priestley
“
Pragmatic Marketing
As a rule, software systems do not work

well until they have been used, and have
failed repeatedly, in real applications.
Dave Parnas
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never become so much of an expert that

you stop gaining expertise. View life as a
continuous learning experience.
Denis Waitley
Reach your buyers

with high rankings.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Two things are infinite: the universe and

human stupidity; and I'm not sure about
the universe.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Normal people don't understand this

concept; they believe that if it ain't broke,
don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't
broke, it doesn't have enough features
yet.
Scott Adams
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Why is it so important to answer customer

questions? Because that's what selling is.
Kristin Zhivago
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a

life's experience.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is good to be without vices, but it is not

good to be without temptations.
Walter Bagehot
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you want to achieve excellence, you

can get there today. As of this second,
quit doing less-than-excellent work.
Thomas J Watson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You do not lead by hitting people over

the head -- that's assault, not leadership.
Dwight D Eisenhower
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Quality is never an accident. It is always

the result of an intelligent effort.
John Ruskin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It’s not possible to do

the wrong thing the right way.
Mark Schlereth
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The enemy of inquiry is

authoritarian certainty.
M. Robert Gardner
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No one over paid to see someone juggle

one thing.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you chase two rabbits at once,

both will get away.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
cogent
\KOH-junt\
adjective: appealing forcibly to the mind
or reason, convincing, pertinent, relevant
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Solve real problems. People don't argue

the cost of a fire hose when their house is
on fire.
Steve Johnson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A mind stretched by a new idea can never

go back to its original dimensions.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not

ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
Stephen Hawking
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You become what you think about.
Earl Nightingale
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No matter how well you know what a

person has done and what he thought he
was doing when he did it and what he
now thinks of what he did, it is impossible
to be certain of what he will do next.
Orson Scott Card

proven strategies,

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
First draft pick? A guiding thing for me

would be a Product Marketing guy,
somebody that understands how to apply
technology in the market.
Bill Campbell, CEO of Intuit
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A fundamental design and life lesson from

the Zen arts is to never use more when
less will do.
Garr Reynolds
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Choose being kind over being right.
Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The efficient person gets the job done

right; the effective person gets the right
job done.
From a fortune cookie
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is high time that the ideal of success

should be replaced by the ideal of service.
Albert Einstein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The most common commodity in this

country is unrealized potential.
Calvin Coolidge
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When you have wisdom that another

person knows that he needs, you give it
freely. But when the other person doesn't
yet know that he needs your wisdom, you
keep it to yourself. Food only looks good
to a hungry man.
Orson Scott Card
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Seeing ourselves as others see us would

probably confirm our worst suspicions
about them.
Franklin P. Adams
“
Pragmatic Marketing
They may forget what you said, but they

will never forget how you made them feel.
Carl W. Buechner
Did you know?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Small minds have always lashed out at

what they don’t understand. There are
those who create… and those who tear
down. That dynamic has existed for all
time.
Dan Brown
“
Pragmatic Marketing
glitch
\GLITCH\
noun : a usually minor malfunction; also :
an unexpected defect, fault, flaw, or
imperfection
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Whenever someone says "I'm not book

smart, but I'm street smart",
all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm
imaginary smart”.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
More often than not, when someone is

telling me a story all I can think about is
that I can't wait for them to finish so that I
can tell my own story that's not only
better, but also more directly involves me.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Bad decisions make good stories.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out

of Word and it asks me if I want to save
any changes to my ten page research
paper that I swear I did not make any
changes to.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I keep some people's phone numbers in

my phone just so I know not to
answer when they call.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The universe is made of stories,

not of atoms.
Muriel Rukeyser
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If a man does not know what port he is

steering for, no wind is favorable to him.
Seneca

management roles &

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I despise the pleasure

of pleasing people that I despise.
Mary Wortley Montagu
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People change and forget to tell each

other.
Lillian Hellman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Ideas always seem strange

until you try them on, Brother.
Brother Cavil, Battlestar Galactica
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The greatest lesson in life is to know that

even fools are right sometimes.
Winston Churchill
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A stopped clock is more accurate than a

slow one.
Bob Corrigan
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Never lend books, for no one ever returns

them; the only books I have in my library
are books that other folks have lent to me.
Jacques Anatole François Thibault
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Some people aren’t used to an

environment where excellence is
expected.
Steve Jobs
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Steve Jobs is the master at taking

something that might be considered
boring—a hunk of electronic hardware—
and enveloping it in a story that makes it
compellingly dramatic.
Alan Deutschman
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Your widget doesn’t inspire. Show me

how your widget improves my life, and
you’ve won me over. Do it in a way that
entertains me, and you’ll have created a
true evangelist.
Carmine Gallo
Did you know?


great material.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
One must lie under certain circumstances

and at all times when one can’t do
anything about them.
Harper Lee
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People do not pay attention to boring

things.
Carmine Gallo
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Atticus, he was real nice…”
“Most people are, Scout,

when you finally see them.”
Harper Lee
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You’ve got to start with the customer

experience and work back toward the
technology—not the other way around.
Steve Jobs
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The essence of evangelism is to

passionately show people how you can
make history together. Evangelism has
little to do with cash flow, the bottom line,
or co-marketing.
Guy Kawasaki
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Your work is going to fill a large part of

your life, and the only way to be truly
satisfied is to do what you believe is great
work. And the only way to do great work
is to love what you do. If you haven’t
found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.
Steve Jobs
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Find something you love to do so much,

you can’t wait for the sun to rise to do it all
over again.
Chris Gardner
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If you don’t have passion, you have no

energy, and if you don’t have energy, you
have nothing.
Donald Trump
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Great leaders rally people to a better

future.
Marcus Buckingham
The One Thing You Need to Know
Framework?


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Design is a funny word. Some people

think design means how it looks. But of
course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it
works.
Steve Jobs
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There’s a difference between the

production of a person and people who
make a production out of everything.
Tom Jackson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The only difference between stumbling

blocks and stepping stones is the way in
which you use them.
Unknown
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No matter what accomplishments you

make, somebody helped you.
Althea Gibson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It doesn't matter much where you live. It

only matters how well you live when
you're there.
Unknown
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The problem with Microsoft is they just

have no taste. And I don’t mean that in a
small way; I mean that in a big way.
Steve Jobs
“
Pragmatic Marketing
perspicuous
\per-SPIK-yuh-wus\ adjective
: plain to the understanding especially
because of clarity and precision of
presentation
“
Pragmatic Marketing
In theory, theory and practice are the

same. In practice, they are not.
Yoga Berra
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Listen more than you talk.

Listen first, and join the conversation
second.
Casey Hibbard
Did you know?
management survey.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Ideas can't do harm—even wrong ideas,

even foolish and vicious ideas. People do
the harm.
Isaac Asimov
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Ugly is when the design isn’t generated

by real reasons but rather by
arbitrariness.
Jason Fifield
Ankrom Moisan Architects
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People respond to incentives, although

not necessarily in ways that are
predictable or manifest.
Steven D. Levitt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Deliberate practice has three key

components: setting specific goals,
obtaining immediate feedback, and
concentrating as much on technique as
on outcome.
Steven D. Levitt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A person experiences ‘cognitive drift’ if

more than one second elapses between
clicking the mouse and seeing new data
on the screen. If ten seconds pass, the
person’s mind is somewhere else entirely.
Steven D. Levitt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People don't want to buy a quarter-inch

drill; they want a quarter-inch hole.
Theodore Levitt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
mollycoddle
\MAH-lee-kah-dul\
verb
: to treat with an excessive or absurd
degree of indulgence or attention
(Sound like anyone we know?)
“
Pragmatic Marketing
They thought their trademark was a magic

stamp which did the trick by some sort of
voodoo power and that it would keep
them rich.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Whether it's a symphony or a coal mine,

all work is an act of creation.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
Product Management


and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A desk is a dangerous place from which

to watch the world.
John le Carre
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Memory is the way we keep telling

ourselves our stories—and telling other
people a somewhat different version of
our stories.
Alice Munro
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I am always at a loss at how much to

believe of my own stories.
Washington Irving
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Delighted customers are the only

advertisement everyone believes.
Guy Kawasaki
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Life is the only game in which the object

of the game is to learn the rules.
Ashleigh Brilliant
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Make failure your teacher,

not your undertaker.
Zig Ziglar
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Life should not be a journey to the grave

with the intention of arriving safely in an
attractive and well-preserved body, but
rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in
one hand, champagne in the other, body
thoroughly used up, totally worn out and
screaming “WOO HOO! what a ride!”
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The larger the crowd, the more easily they

are swayed by emotion rather than by
reason.
Isaac Asimov
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When I coded this, only God and I knew

what I was doing. Now only God knows.
A tired programmer
Did you know?

available.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Dumb loses more games

than smart wins games.
Bob Knight
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Success is the ability to go from one

failure to another with no loss of
enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Normal people don't understand this

concept; they believe that if it ain't broke,
don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't
broke, it doesn't have enough features
yet.
Scott Adams
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We didn’t get here by playing the rules of

the game. We got here by setting the
rules of the game.
Chris Albrecht, CEO of HBO
“
Pragmatic Marketing
First things first,

but not necessarily in that order.
Doctor Who
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Cosmeticize
\kahz-MET-uh-syze\ verb
: to make (something unpleasant or ugly)
superficially attractive
“
Pragmatic Marketing
"It's not what you know,

it's what you can find out."
Marissa Mayer, Google
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If we have a good quarter it's because of

the work we did three, four, and five years
ago. It's not because we did a good job
this quarter.
Jeff Bezos
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We start with the customer and we work

backward. We learn whatever skills we
need to service the customer. We build
whatever technology we need to service
the customer.
Jeff Bezos
want to buy.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I'm just a squirrel trying to get a nut in a

world full of fruit!
Sean Cramer
GoDaddy
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells

you it’s going to be a butterfly.
Buckminster Fuller
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Talent, more than experience,

brainpower, and willpower alone, are the
prerequisites for excellence.
Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest
Managers Do Differently
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is not advisable to venture unsolicited

opinions. You should spare yourself the
embarrassing discovery of their exact
value to your listener.
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
“
Pragmatic Marketing
"Well, whose opinion did you take?"

"I don't ask for opinions."
"What do you go by?"
"Judgment.”
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Everyone gets so much information all

day long that they lose their common
sense.
Gertrude Stein
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Items on the roadmap appear smaller

than they actually are.
Pascale L'Heureux
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It’s my job to present facts. I don’t think

people need me screaming at them. I
think there’s far too much screaming
going on in television as it is.
Anderson Cooper
CNN
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Sure, it works in practice,

but does it work in theory?
An old economists’ saying
Did you know?

have?

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
People aren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ People are

people, and they respond to incentives.
They can nearly always be manipulated,
for good or ill, if only you find the right
levers.
Steven D. Levitt
“
Pragmatic Marketing
All you need in this life is ignorance and

confidence; then success is sure.
Mark Twain
“
Pragmatic Marketing
If I had to live my life again, I'd make the

same mistakes, only sooner.
Tallulah Bankhead
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No matter how good your intentions, if

your audience doesn’t trust you, you will
fail. Audiences can see through
insincerity.
Dr. Nick Morgan
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It was the first follower that transformed a

lone nut into a leader.
Derek Sivers
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I don’t guess. As a scientist I reach

conclusions based on observation and
experimentation. Although, as I’m saying
this, it occurs to me that you may have
been employing a rhetorical device,
rendering my response moot.
“Sheldon” on The Big Bang Theory
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Engineering: where the noble semi-skilled

laborers execute the vision of those who
think and dream. Hello, Ooompa-
Loompas of science.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What computer do you have? And please

don't say "a white one."
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You know, it’s amazing how many

supervillains have advanced degrees.
Graduate schools should probably do a
better job at screening those people out.
embrace.

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
No, it's not going to be fine. Change is

never fine. They say it is, but it's not.
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Whenever I'm about to do something,

I think “Would an idiot do that?”
And if they would, I do not do that thing.
“Dwight Schrute” on The Office
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A leader must have the courage to act

against an expert's advice.
James Callaghan
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Wise men don't need advice.

Fools won't take it.
Benjamin Franklin
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The surprising thing about young fools is

how many survive to become old fools.
Doug Larson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Build a system that even a fool can use,

and only a fool will want to use it.
George Bernard Shaw
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Most of us ask for advice when we know

the answer but we want a different one.
Ivern Ball
“
Pragmatic Marketing
What you do speaks so loudly that I

cannot hear what you say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There are only two kinds of people:

The people in your way, and the people
you're in the way of.
Did you know?



and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
“Arithmetic” is numbers you squeeze from

your head to your hand to your pencil to
your paper till you get the answer.
Carl Sandburg
“
Pragmatic Marketing
He listens well who takes notes.
Alighieri Dante
“
Pragmatic Marketing
He who laughs, lasts.
Mary Pettibone Poole
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You are one of the rare people who can

separate your observation from your
preconception. You see what is, where
most people see what they expect.
John Steinbeck
East of Eden
“
Pragmatic Marketing
The biggest fool may come out with a bit

of sense when you least expect it.
Eden Phillpotts

execution.

book.
and consulting
Did you know?
Titles are a mess!

requirements.

and consulting


office.

and consulting
Did you know?

management.

and consulting
x

product success.

and consulting
Did you know?


and consulting
Reach your buyers

with high rankings.

and consulting
Did you know?


and consulting

proven strategies,

and consulting
Did you know?


and consulting

management roles &

and consulting
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I try to buy stock in businesses that are so

wonderful that an idiot can run them.
Because sooner or later, one will.
Warren Buffett
“
Pragmatic Marketing
It is one of the triumphs of the human that

he can know a thing and still not believe
it.
John Steinbeck
East of Eden
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Be yourself;
everyone else is already taken.
Oscar Wilde
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I believe in an open mind, but not so open

that your brains fall out.
Arthur Hays Sulzberger
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Incompetents invariably make trouble for

people other than themselves.
Larry McMurtry
“
Pragmatic Marketing
When you don’t know what you believe,

everything becomes an argument. When
you stand for something, decisions are
obvious.
Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

37Signals
“
Pragmatic Marketing
There’s a world of difference between

truly standing for something and having a
mission statement that says you stand for
something.

37Signals
“
Pragmatic Marketing
A business without a path to profit isn’t a

business, it’s a hobby.

37Signals
“
Pragmatic Marketing
You don’t make a great museum by

putting all the art in the world into a single
room. That’s a warehouse.

37Signals
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Don’t shy away from the fact that your

product or service does less. Highlight it.
Be proud of it.

37Signals
“
Pragmatic Marketing
‘Easy’ is a word that’s used to describe

other people’s jobs.

37Signals
“
Pragmatic Marketing
I have never let my schooling interfere

with my education.
Mark Twain
“
Pragmatic Marketing
Computers make it easier to do a lot of

things, but most of the things they make it
easier to do don't need to be done.
Andy Rooney
“
Pragmatic Marketing
We tend to overestimate the effect of a

technology in the short run and
underestimate the effect in the long run.
futurist Roy Amara
“
Pragmatic Marketing
As a rule, the harder an agency tries to

keep the media away, the more
dysfunction that agency is trying to hide.
Dana Milbank
Washington Post

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Men’s maxims reveal their characters.

The Pragmatic Marketer is your

We are always looking for

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Management is doing things right;

It’s not that problems are invisible;

When was the last time you bought your

Craig Stull, Phil Myers, David Meerman Scott

Simplification is one of the most difficult

The great thing about fact-based

Jeff Bezos, Founder, Amazon.com

It’s easier to find products for people you

The revenue-driven organization worries

Craig Stull, Phil Myers, David Meerman Scott

We provide workshops and

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Our plan is to invent some sort of

A “visionary” in a Dilbert cartoon strip

Common sense is not so common.

I will not expose the

Learning how to think is more important

No matter what happens, somebody will

I quote others only to

One original thought is worth a thousand

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How we spend our days is, of course,

Nature has given to men one tongue, but

Epictetus, Greek philosopher

I used to think that the problem with

[Called “innovation” in some companies]

I've also learned that only through

focus can you do world-class things,

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of

The kind of humor I like is the thing that

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not

I may have said the same thing before but

A briefing for executives

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Blessed is the man who,

People don’t ask for facts in making up

Robert Keith Leavitt

I think every person should be able to

Linus Pauling, scientist

Look and you will find it.

factoid \'fak-'toid\ noun

I ain’t got time to stand around here and

Barney Fife (Don Knotts),

Never trust anyone you don’t understand.

What we are trying to do

Ries and Trout

Past issues of our magazine are

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If you look for the good in people

During my service in the United States

He who builds to every man’s advice will

The only thing to do with

Build software so that it needs a short

Complexity is not be admired.

Please bring your vehicle to a

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The only art is to omit.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.