Zak's Quotes
For some time now, Zak El-Ramly, President and CEO of ZE PowerGroup®, has been compiling and sharing weekly quotes in order to offer his observations and insights into life, business and family affairs. Due to their growing popularity among collegues, family, and friends, Zak has decided to share his "Zakisms" with you as well, and will truly welcome any comments or feedback you may wish to share.
March 01, 2010
"The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses."
— Napoleon Hill
"Beware of those who quickly make fancy promises, they are usually good at conveniently making excuses."
— Zak
"An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded."
— Pope John Paul II
"Those who are willing to claim the credit should be subject to receiving the blame."
— Zak
"Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame."
— Erica Jong
"If you are misunderstood, you have miss-communicated."
— Zak
Or failed to consider the position of the listener - still miss-communicated.
"Be smart, be intelligent and be informed."
— Tony Alessandra
"It is better to build on someone else ideas or plans and make them better than to have your very own inferior ones."
— Zak
We often like to "reinvent the wheel" because we like to get the credit.
"Our ability to use our smarts is hampered by our need to show how smart we are."
— Zak
"The key word is flexibility, the ability to adapt constantly. Darwin said it clearly. People thought that he mainly talked about survival of the fittest. What he said was that the species that survive are usually not the smartest or the strongest, but the ones most responsive to change. So being attentive to customers and potential partners is my best advice--after, of course, perseverance and patience."
— Philippe Kahn
"It is easy to complicate matters, the challenge is in simplifying the complex."
— Zak
"Things should be as simple as possible but no simpler"
— Albert Einstein
"Do not let the simplicity of the solution fool you (to the level of effort spent). The simplest solution is often the hardest to arrive at. The difficulty, and wisdom, lies in filtering the noise and see the intuitively obvious."
— Zak
The devil should remain only in the details (the noise).
"Courage means to keep working a relationship, to continue seeking solutions to difficult problems, and to stay focused during stressful periods."
— Denis Waitley
January 27, 2010
"Mistakes are merely steps up the ladder..."
— Paul J. Meyer
"Mistakes by their nature are never intentional or planned, they just happen, and become a fact (sunk). As humans we will invariably make mistakes. What differentiate us is our capacity to accept mistakes, our courage to assume responsibility for them and our resolve to reduce their frequency or adverse impact."
— Zak
The weak takes the eventuality of mistakes as an excuse for making them, the strong takes the eventuality of mistakes as a reason to be extra diligent.
"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything"
— William Connor Magee
"A sincere apology has many values. It defines the wrong, assigns responsibility for it, requests forgiveness and more importantly, implies a promise not to repeat the wrong."
— Zak
It is our ego, arrogance, or inability to promise not to repeat the wrong that stops us from liberally apologizing.
A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
— James Joyce
"Accepting the wrong is frequently less costly than insisting on the right."
— Zak
"Your principles are not your principles until you have to pay to uphold them."
— Borrowed and rewarded from a friend's mother
"We sometimes have to do or accept what we think is wrong to do right. Doing only the right thing does not always guarantee the right overall outcome."
— Zak
Life is driven by many objectives, and sometimes you may have to accept a bit of wrong to maintain an overall right
"If we do not learn to live together as friends, we will die apart as fools."
— Martin Luther King
"Do not monitor life for fairness on a day to day or action by action basis. The fairness score should be tallied over a long window, to allow all our good and bad, right and wrong, mistakes and recoveries, benign and malicious to be added up fairly."
— Zak
"In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it."
— Marianne Williamson
January 18, 2010
"If life appears ironic and paradoxical; it is. It requires us to continually arrive at a compromise. The compromise is driven by many factors; there are no prescriptions or predictable answers. The right answer is different, even for similar situations."
— Zak
The right answer is also a function of the person making it, the timing and his/her ability to cope with the outcome.
"We tend to get what we expect."
— Norman Vincent Peale
"The problem with choices in life is that they are seldom singular, independent or mutually exclusive. Every choice comes in, or with, a package. Our obsession with one feature of our choice blinds us to all other aspects of it, and the associated package. Absent careful reflection our obsession can lead us to making a wrong overall choice."
— Zak
The obsessive feature(s) that we are after define who we are.
Be careful of what you wish for, you may actually get it.
— Chinese Proverb
Get it, and all the other things that come with it, even those that you were not expecting or factoring into your calculation.
"When we choose how to associate with family, friends and business partners, we also indirectly define how they will associate with us. Unfortunately, we sometimes think that we are in control and underestimate the ability, or desire, of others to accept, reject or ignore us."
— Zak
"Ambiguity is occasionally a virtue, it allows us to understand, and accept, events differently; when clarity would split us."
— Zak
Also ambiguity allows us not to see/ignore what we do not like.
"The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him... and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too."
— Samuel Butler
"Insisting on finding a logical explanation to a clearly irrational condition or behavior is the utmost in illogic. Often the apparent irrationality is the result of too many known and unknown factors at play in a complex relation. It is better to spend the energy describing what it is and how to deal with it than trying to find why it is how it is."
— Zak
"What's going on in the inside shows on the outside."
— Earl Nightingale
Dr. El-Ramly has published his previous quotes in a limited edition book which was made available to his family and friends. The feedback he received tempted him to explore publishing his Zakisms in a book available to the public. He would like to sincerely thank those who provided comments to him.
ZE PowerGroup Inc. is an energy industry leader in the development of data management and analysis software systems for energy market competitors. The ZEMA suite offers a comprehensive solution for data acquisition, database integration, and data warehousing, as well as powerful analytic capabilities. The sophisticated suite of applications provides the ability to perform hundreds of predefined calculations using an extensive collection of relevant market data and time-series data in order to support gas, power and crude oil trading decisions. Utilizing data and analysis on underlying energy commodities such as natural gas, coal, crude oil, and emissions, ZEMA provides users with the power to make timely, bottom line energy trading decisions.
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