Centenarians

"To face the powder, not powder the face."

"The best way to regain poetry is to recreate it."

"By riverside are cooing A pair of turtledoves; A good young man is wooing A maiden fair he loves."

"A verse translation should be faithful to the original, less in form than in sense. Or in other words, a poetic translation should be as beautiful as the original in sense, in sound and, if possible, in form."

"The sun beyond the mountains glows; The Yellow River seawards flows. You can enjoy a grander sight By climbing to a greater height."

"If they had set out to kill six million Jews they would have done it. But all we hear about is Holocaust survivors. "Oh, we know it happened, cause over there is a survivor. Oh, my mother and father were survivors," they say. This is absolutely ridiculous. And (the Holocaust) it's all - maybe not all fiction - but most of it is. For instance the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz would not do the job. Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it? It takes a liter of petrol and 20 minutes - now six million of them? They (the Germans) did not have the gas to do it. That's why they lost the war."

"a Masonic plot backed by the Jews"

"I have a philosophy, you do the best you can, and the things you can’t do anything about, don’t give any thought to them. … I feel I have to make a contribution. When I was doing surgery, I made it by operating. Now I try to make it by speaking about preventive medicine."

"Gulick divided the work of chief executives into seven functional elements. He used the acronym POSDCORB, representing the initials of the following activities, Planning... , Organizing... , Staffing... , Directing..., Coordinating..., Reporting..., Budgeting... Although Gulick visualized management as universal activity, his description of the preceding elements of a chief executive’s job primarily pertained to governmental administration. Gulick went on to identify four basic systems of departmentalization: purpose, process, person or things, and place. He held that "the major purpose of organization is co-ordination." In Gulick’s scheme, there is no one most effective system of departmentalization."

"Public administration is that part of the science of administration which has to do with government, and thus concerns itself primarily with the executive branch, where the work of government is done, though there are obviously administrative problems also in connection with the legislative and the judicial branches. Public administration is thus a division of political science, and one of the social sciences."

"The fundamental objective of the science of administration is the accomplishment of the work in hand with the least expenditure of man-power and materials. Efficiency is thus axiom number one in the value scale of administration. This brings administration into apparent conflict with certain elements of the value scale of politics, whether we use that term in its scientific or in its popular sense. But both public administration and politics are branches of political science, so that we are in the end compelled to mitigate the pure concept of efficiency in the light of the value scale of politics and the social order. There are, for example, highly inefficient arrangements like citizen boards and small local governments which may be necessary in a democracy as educational devices. It has been argued also that the spoils system, which destroys efficiency in administration, is needed to maintain the political party, that the political party is needed to maintain the structure of government, and that without the structure of government, administration itself will disappear. While this chain of causation has been disproved under certain conditions, it none the less illustrates the point that the principles of politics may seriously affect efficiency. Similarly in private business it is often true that the necessity for immediate profits growing from the system of private ownership may seriously interfere with the achievement of efficiency in practice."

"A workman subject to orders from several superiors will be confused, inefficient, and irresponsible; a workman subject to orders from but one superior may be methodical, efficient, and responsible."

"Administration has to do with getting things done; with the accomplishment of defined objectives. The science of administration is thus the system of knowledge whereby men may understand relationships, predict results, and influence outcomes in any situation where men are organized at work together for a common purpose."

"Students of administration have long sought a single principle of effective departmentalization just as alchemists sought the philosophers' stone. But they have sought in vain. There is apparently no one most effective system of departmentalism."

"The theory of organization... has to do with the structure of co-ordination imposed upon the work-division units of an enterprise."

"It is appropriate at the outset of this discussion to consider the reasons for and the effect of the division of work. It is sufficient for our purpose to note the following factors."

"The efficiency of a group working together is directly related to the homogeneity of the work they are performing."

"What is the work of the chief executive? What does he do?"

"[POSDCORB as]... statement of the work of a chief executive is adapted from the functional analysis elaborated by Henri Fayol in his "Industrial and General Administration." It is believed that those who know administration intimately will find in this analysis a valid and helpful pattern, into which can be fitted each of the major activities and duties of any chief executive."

"At the present time administration is more an art than a science; in fact there are those who assert dogmatically that it can never be anything else. They draw no hope from the fact that metallurgy, for example, was completely an art several centuries before it became primarily a science and commenced its great forward strides after generations of intermittent advance and decline."

"The power of an idea to serve as the foundation of co-ordination is so great that one may observe many examples of co-ordination even in the absence of any single leader or of any framework of authority."

"It may also be noted that the authoritarian states are in trouble internationally. Some regard this as intentional, as part of the diversion and scapegoat technique, while others think that it is more or less inevitable because of the very co-ordination of the economic activities of the individual nations in question."

"I have got only one wrinkle, and I am sitting on it."

"I had a hell of a lot of will power! A hell of a will power, you understand? And it was very useful to me."

"Every age has its happiness and troubles."

"I see badly, I hear badly, and I feel bad, but everything's fine."

"I took pleasure when I could... I acted clearly and morally and without regret. I'm very lucky."

"I wait for death... and journalists."

"I have a rather masculine nature. I'm not afraid of anything."

"I had to wait 110 years to become famous... I intend to enjoy it as long as possible."

"Throughout history, people have never before expected to be as comfortable as people do today."

"The slogans of 'countering back the mainland' created by Chiang Kai-shek and 'liberating Taiwan' by Mao Zedong several decades ago should be forgotten because none of them could be put into practice."

"When people on both sides of the Strait reach a consensus on their political system, unification will come to fruition naturally."

"Taiwanese independence is a dead end."

"He is an engineer of integrity, character and broad national outlook who could take an unbiased view, resist local pressures and whose views would be respected and accepted by all."

"Industrialize or Perish"

"In spite of strength of my conviction, I have certain great regard for your fine abilities and love for the country and that shall be unabated whether I have the good fortune to secure your cooperation or face your honest opposition....I see that we hold perhaps diametrically opposite views. My conviction based upon extensive experiences of village life is that in India at any rate for generations to come, we shall not be able to make much use of mechanical power for solving the problem of the ever growing poverty of the masses."

"The development of this system, the [Block System] is due entirely to the genius of Mr Vishvesharaya, certainly one of the ablest officers, European or Indian, of the Public Works Department, with whom it has been my pleasure and honour to work"

"It is better to work out than rust out."

"As sound as what one might expect from the distinguished engineer who drew them up. He has shown the way to turn dire misfortune into a positive blessing. The proposals are without blemish. I strongly advocate carrying out the scheme."

"These facts and figures must serve as an eye-opener to the people of Mysore. I refer to them here not because I have any hopes of our reaching the levels of prosperity of the two Colonies, but because it will do us good to know what organization and human endeavour are capable of achieving under favourable conditions. / The nationality of our people rests on a religious and fatalistic basis, not on an economic basis, as in the West. There are still people among us who believe that the golden age was in the past, the world is on the down-grade and the old-word conditions might yet be reproduced some day. The Hindu ideal of life is that this world is a preparation for the next and not a place to stay in and make ourselves comfortable. We are devoted to past ideals, although, out of necessity or from prospect of personal gain, we have partly taken to Western methods of work and business. There is a yearning for the old ideals and a half-hearted acquiescence in the new and, on the whole, the genius of the people is for standing still. / If we are to follow in the wake of other countries in the pursuit of material prosperity, we must give up aimless activities and bring our ideals into line with the standards of the West, namely, to spread education in all grades, multiply occupations and increase production and wealth. All other activities should conform themselves to the economic idea. [148-149]"

"I walked my way to good health"

"Was one of the greatest patriots of India belonging to no party, adopting no slogans, attached to no shibboleths but dedicated to the upliftment of his countrymen. He is undoubtedly the best known engineer of India. He was an able administrator, educationist and foresighted planner. His name ranks high among those who promoted industrialisation of India. He is known for his dictum "Industrialise or perish"."

"The Indian mind needs to be familarised with the principles of modern progress, a universal impulse for enquiry and enterprise awakened, and earnest thinking and effort promoted. A new type of Indian citizenship purposeful, progressive and self-respecting should be created, and self-reliant nationhood developed."

"Self-examination not moral or spiritual, but secular - that is, a survey and analysis of local conditions in India and a comparative study of the same with those in other parts of the globe."

"You are for developing village industries and I favour both heavy industries and village industries. To the extent that you propose to advance village industries, I am at once with you. I can never persuade myself to take up a hostile attitude towards any constructive work, from any quarter, least of all towards work attempted by one with your brilliant historic achievements in public life....I am in favour of heavy industries because heavy industries will save the money that is going out of the country in large sums every year; heavy industries are required to provide the local manufactures of machinery and equipment required by our railways and for defence forces and heavy industries are required also for supplying machinery and tools for the village industries themselves. I recommend more extended use of mechanical power because it produces results for the country much more rapidly than human power. The object is to get food and commodities required by our people for a decent standard of living as speedily as possible."

"Mental energy is wasted in caste disputes and village factions."

"Progress in every country depends mainly on the education of its people. Without education, we are a nation of children. The difference between one man and another, apart from birth and social position, consists in the extent of knowledge, general and practical, acquired by him. We may safely assume that man in all countries within certain limits start with the same degree of intelligence. A civilised nation is distinguished from an uncivilised one by the extent of its acquired intelligence and skill."

"He wrote in his letter addressed to Jawahar Lal Nehru, then Prime Minister of India when the Bharat Ratna title was conferred on him, as quoted in"

"If you feel that by giving this title, I will praise your government, you will be disappointed. I am a fact finding man."