I've liked this quote since I first came across it many years ago now.
We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralisation.
We've all worked somewhere like that! Reputedly it's from Petronius, the 'arbiter', who was a sort of sophisticated trend setter and judge of taste in the time of the Emperor Nero. Petronius was the author of the Satyricon, arguably the first-ever novel, and a rip-roaring read even today. Eventually poor Petronius fell out of favour.
The quote above is beautifully written and seems exactly the kind of thing that Petronius might have written. But—sadly—it seems to be modern, written by Charlton Ogburn in 1959. I don't know how Petronius came to be given the credit, but the tone sounds so classical somehow that it's surprising it has not been translated into Latin.
We Trained Hard...
I've liked this quote since I first came across it many years ago now.
We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralisation.
We've all worked somewhere like that! Reputedly it's from Petronius, the 'arbiter', who was a sort of sophisticated trend setter and judge of taste in the time of the Emperor Nero. Petronius was the author of the Satyricon, arguably the first-ever novel, and a rip-roaring read even today. Eventually poor Petronius fell out of favour.
The quote above is beautifully written and seems exactly the kind of thing that Petronius might have written. But—sadly—it seems to be modern, written by Charlton Ogburn in 1959. I don't know how Petronius came to be given the credit, but the tone sounds so classical somehow that it's surprising it has not been translated into Latin.