My Take: Them's Fightin' Words

You don’t need me to remind you that you’re in a war out there: a war on downtime and wasted, sometimes misguided, efforts around your facilities. Many of you reading this column are dug in deep, waging a 24/7 battle against any number of enemies that threaten the reliability, safety, compliance, efficiency, productivity and sustainability of your operations.

Most of you are well armed with weapons to overcome whatever’s hurled your way. We’ve been presenting these types of powerful solutions and strategies to you in Maintenance Technology for, as of January 1, 2012, more than 25 years. My question here is what are some of the rallying cries or words of wisdom that help you slog through the muck and minefields? We want you to share them with others through a new department in this magazine called (duh!) “Fightin’ Words.”

Think in terms of notable, quotable quotes—most of them elegantly simple—that inspire you and could be inspiring others to keep fighting. To prime the pump, consider the following quotes often used by other “warriors” in the reliability and maintenance field. You’ve probably come across them on more than one occasion, including in our pages… 

Contributing Editor Bob Williamson, quoting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”

Contributing Editor Ken Bannister, quoting Albert Einstein: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” 

Consultant Enrique Mora, author of our December article on dealing with the problem of a stagnating workforce, quoting legendary coach Vince Lombardi: “Individual commitment to a group effort—that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

We’re not looking merely for the motivating insight of dead philosophers, physicists, football coaches and the like. Fightin’ words for those in the maintenance and reliability wars can come from any source and any place (i.e., words you may have read, heard, seen, thought or written down yourself.)

(We will, however, consider slightly longer ones.) Send your favorites to us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Include your contact info, as well as details on where you encountered the quote you’re submitting. Be sure to give full credit to the person or character (dead, alive, real or fictional) that uttered or wrote the words, and tell us what makes the idea reflected in them inspiring to you. We’ll pick one or two (maybe even three) of these submissions each month to highlight in our “Fightin’ Words” section.

We look forward to hearing from you soon. So do others who are engaged in the good fight!

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P.S. Best wishes from all of us at MT for a glorious holiday season and a very prosperous new year!