Neverisms

importance, if not more, than the written rules contained in the company’s policy manuals.”

Never underestimate the potential power of

your opening line to hook your reader from the start.ALICE ORR, in No More Rejections: 50 Secrets

to Writing a Manuscript That Sells (2004)

Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, on Gen. Douglas MacArthur

Never underestimate the power of an irate customer.JOEL E. ROSS & MICHAEL J. KAMI, in Corporate

Management in Crisis (1973)

Never underestimate the power of passion.EVE SAWYER

This is an enormously popular observation, found on almost every quotation website, and in many quotation anthologies. After years of searching, I’ve been unable to locate any biographical information on Sawyer, except that she was an American journalist.

Never underestimate the power of what you wear.OSCAR SCHOEFFLER

Schoeffler, the longtime fashion editor at Esquire magazine, added: “After all, there is just a small bit of you sticking out at the collar and cuff. The rest of what the world sees is what you drape on your frame.”

Never underestimate a problem or your power to cope with it.ROBERT H. SCHULLER, in Tough Times

Never Last, but Tough People Do (1996)

Never underestimate the mental health benefits of exercise.DAVID SERVAN-SCHREIBER, in “Run for Your Life,”

a 2004 article in Psychotherapy Networker

Never underestimate the power of a woman spurned.MARCELLA SHIELDS, in Once Upon a

Time There Was a Little Girl (2008)

Never underestimate the power of jealousy

and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that.OLIVER STONE

Stone, with his characteristic fondness for conspiracy theories, said this in an interview with Harry Kreisler of the University of California at Berkeley in 1977. He began by saying:I think that many people in history who had power were bumped off because they had power. This is a rule of life to me. We learn it in the first grade. If you’ve got power, you better watch your back because people are going to be jealous, and envy and jealousy are reigning emotions in this life.

Never underestimate the appeal of anything that was fun at age seven.NEIL STRAUSS, offering a principle of pickup artists,

in Rules of the Game (2007)

Never underestimate the heart of a champion.RUDY TOMJANOVICH

This saying—now something of a cliche in sports circles—was repeatedly used by coach Tomjanovich when his Houston Rockets won back-to-back NBA titles in 1994 and 1995.

Never underestimate intuition.BRAD TONINI, in The New Rules of

the Game for Entrepreneurs (2006)

Never underestimate a man’s ability to underestimate a woman.KATHLEEN TURNER, in the film

V. I. Warshawski (1991)

Turner, as hardboiled private investigator V. I. Warshawski, dispensed this womanly wisdom to Angela Goethals, who played the daughter of a professional hockey player who had been murdered. The film’s producers had hoped the Warshawski character would become a franchise for Turner, but the movie fared badly at the box office, despite some great one-liners. The movie was based on the fictional character created by writer Sara Peretsky, but this never underestimate line does not appear in any of her novels.

Never underestimate the importance of soundbites.LISSA WARREN, in The Savvy Author’s

Guide to Book Publicity (2003)

Warren added: “A soundbite is a turn of phrase, a quip, a clever statement said with authority. It’s controversial, or brilliant, or funny, or profound. You know you’re soundbiting well when what you say is called out in a ‘pull quote.’ ”

Never underestimate the other guy.JACK WELCH, in Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)

About his experiences as CEO of General Electric, Welch wrote: “We tried like hell to look at every new product plan in the context of what the smartest competitor could do to trump us.”

Never underestimate the ability of a politician to(a) say something and not tell you very much,(b) do it with style, and (c) touch all the bases.ROBERT H. WILLIAMS

Paul Dickson called this “Williams’s Law of Political Rhetoric” in The Official Rules for Lawyers, Politicians . . . and Everyone They Torment (1996).

Never overestimate the number of people who buy and read books,

even when those books might solve pressing problems for them.THOMAS A. WILLIAMS, in Publish Your Own Magazine,

Guidebook, or Weekly Newspaper (2002)

Never underestimate a child’s ability to get into more trouble.STEVEN WRIGHT (also attributed to Martin Mull)

six

Never Trust a Computer You Can’t Lift

“Never Trust” Neverisms

On January 24, 1984, Apple Computer cofounder Steve Jobs unveiled the new Macintosh computer to an auditorium packed with Apple enthusiasts. In one of the most anticipated product launches in history, it would be the first time anyone outside the company had actually seen a “Mac,” as it was already being called. Expectations for the Macintosh were so high that some in the company feared they might never be met. Two days earlier, the new computer had been introduced in one of television history’s most dramatic commercials.

During the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII between the Washington Redskins and Oakland Raiders, television viewers around the world were captivated by a slickly produced commercial that began with a dark and disturbing portrayal of a futuristic world where oppressed zombie-like subjects are forcibly marched into a large auditorium to be force-fed a pontificating lecture from a man whose face appears on a huge screen. It was a perfect portrayal of “Big Brother” from George Orwell’s classic novel 1984. As this depressing scene begins to unfold, a beautiful blond athlete in red shorts and white tank-top runs into the auditorium. Pursued by menacing storm troopers, the young woman is carrying a sledge hammer. As she nears the front of the auditorium, she hurls the hammer with a mighty heave, shattering the large screen. And then, as the dark auditorium is bathed in sunlight, a narrator says: