Henry Mintzberg Quotes

Sometimes I want to control things more than I'm able to.

It's natural to be afraid of replacing everything you already gained by a dream.

people who try to control situations all the time are afraid that if they don't, nothing will work out the way they want.

Nobody is afraid of the unknown, what you really fear is the loss of the known.

But, I'm kind of a control freak. I get really freaked out if I don't know what's going on and what's going to happen.

Risk is trying to control something you are powerless over.

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.

People are afraid of things they don't understand. They don't know how to relate. It threatens their security, their existence, their career, image.

I don't seek discomfort. But, very often, you realise that what you fear is actually quite ephemeral; something's different, something's unfamiliar; therefore, it must be worse.

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

When you whisper about something, it's too big, and you can't get it under control and take control of it.

We're terrified of not having the answers, and we would sometimes rather assert an incorrect answer than make our peace with the fact that we really don't know.

When something is new, it creates a new kind of fear.

The reason I'm scared of flying is because I'm not in charge. Being so far out of control terrifies me.

I think so much of real life is this avoidance of getting into the not knowing. So much of my life, I've been running from just admitting that I don't know.

I think you get to a time in life where by definition stuff's turning to quicksand and wherever you can get some solid footing of the familiar suddenly becomes real comforting.

I worry that I will lose control over the projects I get to work on.

Ever since I was a little kid, there was something about change that scared me so much, but, at the same time, I've always been terrified of being stuck, so it's kind of like a paradox that I'm living.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.

One of my own stray childhood fears had been to wonder what a whale might feel like had it been born and bred in captivity, then released into the wild-into its ancestral sea-its limited world instantly blowing up when cast into the unknowable depths, seeing strange fish and tasting new waters, not even having a concept of depth, not knowing the language of any whale pods it might meet. It was my fear of a world that would expand suddenly, violently, and without rules or laws: bubbles and seaweed and storms and frightening volumes of dark blue that never end.

Really it's always things that scare me like loss of control, dealing with the unknown and the unseen... Something that's not supposed to be there and you don't know where it came from, or what it wants from you, or how to defend yourself against it. That's the root of the things I find scary.

Taking a new step. . .is what people fear most.

Any person with any imagination is bound to be afraid.

Fretting springs from a determination to get our own way.