Tom Peters Quotes

Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject.

I'm quite an untidy person in a lot of ways. But order makes me happy. I have to have a clear desk and a tidy desktop, with as few visual distractions as possible. I don't mind sound distractions, but visual ones freak me out.

Never label anything 'Miscellaneous.'

Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.

My preference for clear structures is the result of my desire - perhaps illusory - to keep track of things and maintain my grip on the world.

Order is a necessary condition for anything the human mind is to understand.

My goal is to simplify complexity.

Life is too complicated not to be orderly.

For the first time I saw a medley of haphazard facts fall into line and order. All the jumbles and recipes and hotchpotch of the inorganic chemistry of my boyhood seemed to fit into the scheme before my eyes-as though one were standing beside a jungle and it suddenly transformed itself into a Dutch garden.

Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.

Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

Order and tidiness is the first law of Heaven.

My filing system is messy but orderly.

One way to organize your thoughts is to tidy up, even if it's in places where it makes no sense at all.

Many things complicated by nature are restored by reason.

I think structure is so deep in us. We put it in stories we tell our friends or in emails we write. We want it. It's how we create meaning.

I like it when things are where they're supposed to be.

Facts are often complicated.

I really like keeping my kitchen counters as clear as possible. I tend to function better when there's less clutter.

Clear rules provide huge amounts of freedom: freedom to be safe and freedom to work efficiently because things are in order.

Design is important because chaos is so hard.

All things have their place, knew wee how to place them.

The closest you will ever come in this life to an orderly universe is a good library.

When I transformed my random and raw words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into chapters, a semblance of order and sanity appeared where there had been only chaos and insanity.

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.