Meetings Quotes

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.”
― Dave Barry

“Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“A photograph shouldn't be just a picture, it should be a philosophy.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Each person you meet
is an aspect of yourself,
clamoring for love.”
― Eric Micha'el Leventhal

“His dress told her nothing, but his face told her things which she was glad to know.”
― A.A. Milne, Once on a Time

“We learned not to meet anymore,
We don't raise our eyes to one another,
But we ourselves won't guarantee
What could happen to us in an hour.”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“Each meeting occurs at the precise moment for which it was meant. Usually, when it will have the greatest impact on our lives.”
― Nadia Scrieva, Fathoms of Forgiveness

“You invented me. There is no such earthly being,
Such an earthly being there could never be.
A doctor cannot cure, a poet cannot comfort—
A shadowy apparition haunts you night and day.
We met in an unbelievable year,
When the world's strength was at an ebb,
Everything withered by adversity,
And only the graves were fresh.
Without streetlights, the Neva's waves were black as pitch,
Thick night enclosed me like a wall ...
That's when my voice called out to you!
Why it did—I still don't understand.
And you came to me, as if guided by a star
That tragic autumn, stepping
Into that irrevocably ruined house,
From whence had flown a flock of burnt verse.”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“How the miracle of our meeting
Shone there and sang,
I didn't want to return
From there to anywhere.
Happiness instead of duty
Was bitter delight to me.
Not obliged to speak to anyone,
I spoke for a long while.
Let passions stifle lovers,
Demanding answers,
We, my dear, are only souls
At the limits of the world.”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.”
― Thomas Sowell, Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays

“My advice was to start a policy of making reversible decisions before anyone left the meeting or the office. In a startup, it doesn’t matter if you’re 100 percent right 100 percent of the time. What matters is having forward momentum and a tight fact-based data/metrics feedback loop to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. That’s why startups are agile. By the time a big company gets the committee to organize the subcommittee to pick a meeting date, your startup could have made 20 decisions, reversed five of them and implemented the fifteen that worked.”
― Steven Gary Blank, The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win

“The celebrations
Of secret nonmeetings are empty,
Unspoken conversations,
Unuttered words.
Glances that don't intersect
Don't know where to come to rest.
And only the tears rejoice
Because they can flow and flow.
Sweetbrier around Moscow,
Alas! Somehow it is here ...
And all this they will call
Love eternal.”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“How many twenty-second-century bureaucrats did it take to change a light panel?
We'll have a sub-committee meeting and get back to you with an estimate.”
― Peter F. Hamilton, Great North Road

“In meetings philosophy might work,
on the field practicality works.”
― Amit Kalantri

“I think there needs to be a meeting to set an agenda for more meetings about meetings.”
― Jonah Goldberg

“Whatever happens, I’m glad we met. You’ve made the past few days more bearable for me. Thank you.”
― Jason Medina, The Manhattanville Incident: An Undead Novel

“These are icebreakers. You’re not supposed to break the ice, you’re just supposed to coat your voice with as many layers of confidence as possible so that they don’t hear your voice shake when it’s your turn to speak. Idiot.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“There is no way to justify a long meeting, more than 15 to 30 minutes, where no decisions are made. This kind of meeting should never happen; it is unnecessary.”
― Carlos Marui, MAPS: Boost productivity with Managerial Assertive Picks

“Doesn’t it bother you sometimes
what living is, what the day has turned into?
So many screens and meetings
and things to be late for.”
― Alex Dimitrov

“If you are conducting a one-hour meeting at your company, you have effectively stolen one hour from every person in the room. If there are twenty people in the room, your presentation is now the equivalent of a twenty-hour investment.

It is therefore your responsibility to ensure that you do not waste the hour by reading from PowerPoint slides, providing information that could have been delivered via email, lecturing, pontificating, pandering, or otherwise boring your audience. You must entertain, engage, and inform. Every single time.”
― Matthew Dicks, Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling

“I said nothing. I liked to see how little I could contribute in these meetings. My all-time Personal Best was three words, nothing to add, of which I had been inordinately pleased at the time.”
― Kirsten McDougall, She's a Killer

“at last the endless meeting ends

I begin to recite
the ever more infinite list
of things I do not know”
― Matthew Zapruder

“Birth is the beginning where all part.
Death is the beginning where they meet.”
― Laura (Riding) Jackson, The Close Chaplet

“To meet the people is not only a great way to be realistic but also an immense form of transformation of energies & confidence.”
― Sonal Takalkar

“The shadiest meetings sometimes take place with the brightest of views.”
― Nick Oliveri, The Conjurer

“Some meetings are not by chance yet nor are they destined for nothing is written. God gave us free will.”
― Sivi le poète, Je pars… mais je reviendrai

“Watching an event through a digital screen is not the same experince as observing an event in person through the naked eye. Therefore, in person events should continue to exist despite the virtual modalities that came into existance after the start of the pandemic.”
― Saaiff Alam

“We are unconsciously distracted by seeing our reflection. You can alleviate a lot of the fatigue of teleconferencing all day if you turn off your self-view.”
― Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

“Dacre's staff referred to his morning editorial meetings as the “Vagina Monologues,” because of his habit of calling everybody a “cunt.”
― Tina Brown, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor - the Truth and the Turmoil

“A Chamber of Commerce President is a pure politician. He takes meetings and then takes credit for jobs he didn't create.”
― Jarod Kintz, Eggs, they’re not just for breakfast