Fallibility of Planning

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.¹ — H. L. Mencken

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.² — Robert Burns’

Man proposes; God disposes.

Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.³ Mike Tyson

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy.⁴ — Helmuth von Moltke the Elder No war plan extends beyond the first military engagement with the hostile main forces.

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.⁵ Eisenhower

Napoleon quote, searching, overthinking, “long have I studied war plans, but on the day of battle I throw those all away and act” something like that

There are many plans in a man’s heart,
Nevertheless the Lord’s counsel—that will stand. Proverbs 19:21

Hayek’s arguments against central planning could fit here as well

Consider the little mouse, how sagacious an animal it is which never entrusts its life to one hole only.5 Truculentus, act IV, sc. iv, l. 15

The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken. — GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum [1651] The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole / Can never be a mouse of any soul. — ALEXANDER POPE, Paraphrase of the Prologue [1714], l. 298

It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.” — Publilius Syrus, Maxim 469.

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. — Publilius Syrus.

When Fortune flatters, she does it to betray. — Publilius Syrus.

So may it be that one man proposes, another disposes; and God who is over all does as he pleases. — Cervantes, Don Quixote, pt. II, ch. 43

1. H. L. Mencken, The Divine Afflatus ↩︎
2. Robert Burns, To a Mouse ↩︎
3. ↩︎
4. Verbatim:No war plan extends beyond the first military engagement with the hostile main forces. ↩︎
5. ↩︎