Plans

In general, a plan is a set of intended actions, through which one expects to achieve a goal.

Sourced

• Malum est consilium, quod mutari non potest.
  • Translation: It is a bad plan that can not be changed.
  • Publilius Syrus, Sententiae (c. 43 BC)

• It is better to have a bad plan than no plan.
  • Garry Kasparov, How Life Imitates Chess (2007)

• Plans are insulted destinies. I don't have plans, I only have goals.
  • Ash Chandler, Freudian Slip, Mumbai Mirror Buzz, April 2006.

• "Life is what happens to you, while you're busy making other plans"
  • John Lennon, From Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) off the 1980 "Double Fantasy" album.

• "The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft a-gley; and leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy"
  • Robert Burns, from "To a Mouse" ("Gang aft a-gley" is translated: "Often go awry")

• "Every age has its peculiar folly: Some scheme, project, or fantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the force of imitation."
  • Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

• The plans and schemes of tyrants are broken by many things. They shatter against cliffs of heroic struggle. They rupture on reefs of open resistance. And they are slowly eroded, bit by little bit, on the very beaches where they measure triumph, by countless grains of sand. By the stubborn little decencies of humble little men.
  • Eric Flint In the Heart of Darkness

• This very remarkable man
  Commends a most practical plan:
  You can do what you want
  If you don’t think you can’t
  So don’t think you can’t if you can.
  • Charles Inge, Cleric. On Monsieur Coué

• And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time / As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409
  • Benjamin Gibbard/Chris Walla, from the song What Sarah Said by Death Cab for Cutie.

Proverbs

• Ha'atid hu ma she'kore be'zman she'anachnu asukim be'letachnen (העתיד הוא מה שקורה בזמן שאנחנו עסוקים בלתכנן).
  • Translation (from hebrew): The future is what happens while we are busy planning for it.
  • Meaning: people always say "One day I'll do this and I'll do that", but while they say it, time goes by and they don't put any of their plans to action.

Unsourced

• ...plans are useless but planning is indispensable.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower

• The best plan is no plan at all, then everything goes according to the plan.
  • Jacek Bukowski

• To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.
  • Leonard Bernstein

See also

• Strategy