“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.””

“A mystic seeks and finds the hidden, or as some would state it more aptly, the hidden finds the mystic, who is in search of the hidden.””

Three Mystics Walk into a Tavern: A Once and Future Meeting of Rumi, Meister Eckhart, and Moses de León in Medieval Venice

“De León: “Letting God be God” is key here. When we speak of the Divine, we need to be aware constantly of “unsaying” God, of not confining the Ineffable One to our language and images. God ultimately is “no-thing.” We call this Eyn Sof (“no end”) in the Kabbalah. I believe you use nihil, Latin for “nothing,” Meister Eckhart. My future countryman and fellow mystic John of the Cross will use the Spanish word “nada.” We cannot even say that God is everything because the language implies a definition that is less than the totality and because there is always nothing to something and something can always be expanded. Learning how to experience God, rather than defining God, is what our kind of apophatic mysticism is all about. Eckhart: Yes, Rabbi, I agree totally. God is nothing. No thing. God is nothingness; and yet God is something. God is neither this thing nor that thing that we can express. God is a being beyond all being: God is a beingless being.[17] De León: The Kabbalah warns against “corporealizing” God, diminishing God with some human description, like the ancient white-bearded man seated on a golden throne high above cotton-like cumulus clouds, surrounded by choirs of adoring angels. Doing so limits God to the poverty of our imagination. This becomes a trap that destroys the faith through which we must engage with God.””

Three Mystics Walk into a Tavern: A Once and Future Meeting of Rumi, Meister Eckhart, and Moses de León in Medieval Venice

“Government (to define it de jure, or according to ancient prudence) is an art whereby a civil society of men is instituted and preserved upon the foundation of common right or interest; or, to follow Aristotle and Livy, it is the empire of laws, and not of men.And government (to define it de facto, or according to modern prudence) is an art whereby some man, or some few men, subject a city or a nation, and rule it according to his or their private interest; which, because the laws in such cases are made according to the interest of a man, or of some few families, may be said to be the empire of men, and not of laws.””

The Commonwealth of Oceana and A System of Politics

“His Majesty [James VI & I] did much press for my opinion touching the power of Satan in matters of witchcraft; and asked me, with much gravity, if I did truly understand why the devil did work more with ancient women than others? I did not refrain from a scurvy jest, and even said (notwithstanding to whom it was said) that we were taught hereof in scripture, where it is told that the devil walketh in dry places... More serious discourse did next ensue...””

“Mystical union is distinctive and specific to one's own tradition and experience. Yet, while each experience is unique, it is also inherently universal.””

Three Mystics Walk into a Tavern: A Once and Future Meeting of Rumi, Meister Eckhart, and Moses de León in Medieval Venice

“At Xerox, process owners were assigned to all the key processes. This resulted in a cost savings of $200 million per year””

Streamlined Process Improvement

“Government is no other than the soul of a city or nation.””

The Common-wealth of Oceana ..

“What convenience is there for debate in a crowd, where there is nothing but jostling, treading upon one another, and stirring of blood, than which in this case there is nothing more dangerous?””

The Commonwealth of Oceana

“Licata were answering to,” Jackson says. Jimmy can hear the excitement in his voice, like he’s giving off sparks at his end. “Don’t tell me. It was Salvatore.” “Bigger.” The next morning Jimmy is sitting with Lieutenant Paul Harrington, the kind of boss he wished he had with the cops, at the Sip ’N Soda in Southampton, just down from Town””

Hard to Kill

Quotes by James Harrington