quotes
"Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house."
Henri Poincaré (1854-1912)
(in arbitrary sequence)
This collection is being transferred to my new site, and then further to the Clippings site… Unfortunately, no software seem to last more than two years before it has been complicated to uselessness;
"Expansion means complexity and complexity decay."
—C. Northcote Parkinson (1909-1993)
This is probably a result of common stupidity combined with entropy…?
"The meaning of information is given by the processes that interpret it."
Gregory Bateson (1904-1980)
"To live effectively is to live with adequate information"
Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)
"The best material model of a cat is another, or preferably the same, cat."
Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)
"life is an island of negentropy amid a sea of disorder"
Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)
There are no answers, only cross references (Wiener's Law of Libraries )
Gain in entropy always means loss of information, and nothing more
Every process, event, happening—call it what you will; in a world, everything that is going on in Nature means an increase of the entropy of the part of the world where it is going on. Thus aliving organism continually increases its entropy—or, as you may say, produces positive entropy—and thus tends to approach the dangerous state of maximum entropy, which is death. It can only keep aloof from it, i.e., alive, by continually drawing from its environment negative entropy—which is something very positive as we shall immediately see. What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing inmetabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive.
Erwin Schrödinger (in What is Life?, 1943)
Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all.
One of the chief duties of a mathematician in acting as an advisor to scientists is to discourage them from expecting too much of mathematicians.
The obvious difference between "simple" and "complicated" objects has apparently been perceived a long time ago. On the way to its formalization, an obvious difficulty arises: something that can be described simply in one language may not have a simple description in another and it is not clear what method of description should be chosen.
Andrey Kolmogorov, quoted in The Information by James Gleick
The scientific way of forming concepts differs from that which we use in our daily life, not basically, but merely in the more precise definition of concepts and conclusions; more painstaking and systematic
choice of experimental material, and greater logical economy
Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must move faster than the lion or it will not survive. Every morning a lion wakes up and it knows it must move faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It doesn't matter if you are the lion or the gazelle, when the sun comes up, you better be moving.
Maurice Greene (attributed to Roger Bannister shortly after running the first sub-4 mile)
Words to a Husband
To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.
There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.
Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.
You know you've achieved perfection in design,
Not when you have nothing more to add,
But when you have nothing more to take away.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
William Skakespeare (As You Like It)
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education
Education is what you have left over after you have forgotten everything you have learned
Anonymous
A man’s errors are his portals of discovery
The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
One thing I feel sure of... is that the human race must finally utilize direct sun power or revert to barbarism
Frank Shuman (1862-1918)
Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference
The idea is to die young as late as possible.
The waste basket is a writer’s best friend.
Public management . . . is a world of settled institutions designed to allow imperfect people to
use flawed procedures to cope with insoluble problems.
James Q. Wilson (in Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It)
When faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution
Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds.
The latter cannot understand it when a [person] does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses their intelligence.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
We’re drowning in information and starving for knowledge.
The good news: Computers allow us to work 100% faster.
The bad news: They generate 300% more work.
-Unknown
By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest;
Second, by imitation, which is easiest;
and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.
Progress is impossible without change,
and those who cannot change their minds
cannot change anything.
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before... to test your limits... to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
Those are my principles, if you don’t like them I have others.
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire,emotion and knowledge
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up
Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
Henri-Louis Bergson (1859-1941) French philosopher
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
What was once thought can never be unthought.
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
The flower of humility blossoms only in the ashes of pride.
It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop.
If something doesn't come up the way you want, you have to forge ahead.
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul.
Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
Ralph Vaull Starr
Don't fight forces; use them.
Never complain and never explain.
Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
Winning isn't everything. It is the only thing.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
The hardest thing to understand, is why we can understand at all.
"One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything".
William of Ockham (1285-1349) (Ockham's Razor).
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go
I suppose that leadership at one time meant muscle but today it means getting along with people.
You manage things; you lead people.
Rear Admiral, Dr Grace Murray Hopper, (1906-1992)
When some folks agree with my opinions I begin to suspect I'm wrong.
People have to talk about something just to keep their good voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.
Words are seductive and dangerous material to be used with caution
The greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong.
Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.
Success is a science. If you have the conditions, you get the results.
Success has made failures of many men.
Let us leave pretty women to men without imagination.
I invent nothing. I rediscover.
Pushing events to happen before their time is less important than their ultimate achievement. Victory comes to one who knows not only what to do but when to do it.
The most common lie is that with which one lies to oneself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
A man's rootage is more important than his leafage.
Fashion can be bought, style one must possess.
The older you get, the more you learn to see what you've been taught to see. When you're a kid, you see what's there.
A man who has to be convinced to act before he acts is not a man of action.
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.
J. G. Pollard
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing. If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality
As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Never express yourself more clearly than you think.
Luck is being ready for the chance.
Frank J. Dobie
Ability will never catch up for the demand for it.
In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.
It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
Each one of us has a fire in our heart for something. It's our goal in life to find it and to keep it lit.
Mary Lou Retton (American Olympic Gymnast)
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way'
Charles Dickens. "A Tale of Two Cities”, 1859
In science, one can learn the most by studying what seems the least.
You cannot think about thinking, without thinking about something.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
Every man's memory is his private literature.
There are a good many fools who call me a friend, and also a good many friends who call me a fool.
If you always do what interests you, then at least one person is pleased.
In the nature of the mind that makes individual kin, and the differences in the shape, form, or manner of the material atoms out of whose intricate relationships that mind is built are altogether trivial.
And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability
CLARKE'S LAWS:
Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong
Clarke's Second Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
Clarke's Third Law: As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there
Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)
BENNIS' LAWS:
Bennis's First Law of Academic Pseudodynamics: Routine work drives out non routine work and smothers all creative planning, all fundamental change in the university--or any institution.
Bennis's Second Law of Academic Pseudodynamics: Make whatever grand plans you will, but you may be sure that the unexpected or the trivial will disturb and disrupt them.
When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion--the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
We are all here on earth to help others. What I can't figure out is what the others are here for.
Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies
Fredkins Paradox: The more equally attractive two alternatives seem, the harder it can be to choose between them - no matter that, to the same degree, the choice can only matter less.
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid
Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature
MIND. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.
The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all the other things we know. That's why it's almost always wrong to seek the "real meaning" of anything. A thing with just one meaning has scarcely any meaning at all.
The smaller two languages are, the harder it will be to translate between them. This is not because there are too many meanings, but because there are too few. The fewer things an agent does, the less likely that what another agent does will correspond to any of those things. And if two agents have nothing in common, no translation is conceivable.
Our minds contain processes that enable us to solve problems we consider difficult. "Intelligence" is our name for whichever of those processes we don't yet understand.
To be considered an "expert", one needs a large amount of knowledge of only a relatively few varieties. In contrast, an ordinary person's "common sense" involves a much larger variety of different types of knowledge - and this requires more complicated management systems.
Puzzle Principle: We can program a computer to solve any problem by trial and error, without knowing how to solve it in advance, provided only that we can have a way to recognize when the problem is solved.
The experiences we find hardest to recollect are often just the kinds we find the hardest to describe.
You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when.
You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.
Joan Baez (b. 1941) American singer
Do not become attached to the things you like, do not maintain aversion to the things you dislike. Sorrow, fear and bondage come from one's likes and dislikes.
Papert's Principle: Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows.
This difficulty (of making definitions) is increased by the necessity of explaining the words in the same language, for there is often only one word for one idea; and though it may be easy to translate words like bright, sweet, salt, bitter, into another language, it is not easy to explain them.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
How many times in the course of life had I been disappointed by reality because, at the time I was observing it, my imagination, the only organ with which I could enjoy beauty, was not able to function, by virtue of the inexorable law which decrees that only that which is absent can be imagined.
We are living in 1937, and our universities, I suggest, are not half-way out of the fifteenth century. We have made hardly any changes in our conception of university organization, education, graduation, for a century - for several centuries. The three or four years course of lectures, the bachelor who knows some, the master who knows most, the doctor who knows all, are ideas that have come down unimpaired from the Middle Ages. Nowadays no one should end his learning while he lives and these university degrees are preposterous. It is true that we have multiplied universities greatly in the past hundred years, but we seem to have multiplied them altogether too much upon the old pattern.
... a new university is just another imitation of all the old universities that have ever been. Educationally we are still for all practical purposes in the coach and horse and galley stage.
H G Wells (The World Brain, 1938)
An expert is one who does not have to think. He knows.
To him that has, more shall be given; but from him that has not, the little that he has shall be taken away.
Since emotions are few and reasons are many (said the robot, Giskard), the behaviour of a crowd can be more easily predicted than the behaviour of one person can.
The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to it's original size.
The thought behind I strove to join
Unto the thought before.
But sequence ravelled out of reach
Like balls upon the floor
If I'd had more time, I'd written a shorter book.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
Everybody is a moon, and he has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.
... no one has ever found a test to prove what's justified or true.
We turn to quantitites when we can't compare the qualities of things.
We always yearn for certainty, but the only thing beyond dispute is that there's always room for doubt. And doubt is not an enemy that sets constraints on what we Know; the real danger to mental growth is perfect fait, doubts antidote.
The world has kept sentimentalities simply because they are the most practical things in the world. They alone can make men do things. The world does not encourage a perfectly rational lover, simply because a perfect rational lover would never get married. The world does not encourage a perfectly rational army, because a perfect rational army would run away.
It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
"Rise early. It is the early bird that catches the worm." Don't be fooled by this absurd law; I once knew a man who tried it. He got up by sunrise and a horse bit him.
Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all.
An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before.
If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
If Christ were here now, there is one thing he would not be - a Christian.
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
I like criticism, but it must be my way.
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that make horse races.
Scotch whisky ... I always take it at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.
I like to instruct people. It is noble to teach oneself. It is still nobler to teach others, and less trouble.
All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal valuable knowledge.
Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.
I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any.
Mark Twain -- (on his seventieth-birthday)
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.
Genius has no youth, but starts with the ripeness of age and old experience.
Happiness ain't a thing in itself - it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant.
Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired reminder is worth four dollars a minute.
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not.
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
The less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.
It would not be possible for Noah to do in our days what he was permitted to do in his own ... The inspector would come and examine the Ark, and make all sorts of objections.
Mark Twain (in "About All Kinds of Ships")
Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
There is no act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs from any motive but the one - the necessity of appeasing and contenting one's own spirit.
Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world - and never will.
Principles have no real force except when one is well fed.
Often, in matters concerning religion and politics, a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.
.
.
No god and no religion can survive ridicule. No church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field and survive.
Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money from them.
A man's private thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always.
Life does not consist mainly - or even largely - of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head.
Learning began with talk and it is therefore older than books. Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.
I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.
As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.
St Peter's, Vesuvius, Heaven, Hell, everything that is much described is bound to be a disappointment at first experience.
Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas, which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what you really want to say.
A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
By the time anatomically modern human beings arrived, perhaps 100 000 years ago, hominids were already successful tooling hunters, gatherers and scavengers. Then, 10 000 years ago, came the first of the three great technological revolutions that utterly transformed human life. That was the agricultural revolution, which caused human beings to live in settled communities, to greatly intensify the division of labor and to develop technologies for the safe storage of food (pottery) and the recording of commercial activities (writing).
Dennis Flanagan, (Flanagan's Version)
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur - People want to be deceived, therefore let them be deceived.
Romans
I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have it.
Humility is a good quality, but it can be overdone.
Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.
You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss,
A sigh is just a sigh;
The fundamental things apply,
As time goes by.
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Every generation has its own problems; it ought to find out its own solutions. There is no use in our living if we can't do things better than our fathers did.
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
Let us build a pantheon for professors.
It should be located among the ruins of one of the gutted cities of Europe or Japan,
and over the entrance to the ossuary I would inscribe, in letters six or seven feet high, the simple words:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE WORLD'S EDUCATORS.
Aldous Huxley, (foreword to the 1946 edition of "Brave New World")
People from my country believe - and rightly so - that the only thing separating man from the animals is mindless superstition and pointless ritual.
Latka Gravis
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
It isn't that they can't see the solution, it is that they cannot see the problem.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
The human mind welcomes the familiar. It is prejudiced in favor of what it knows about and against that of what it is ignorant.
Arthur Stone Dewing
In a complete rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less.
After an adult lifetime spent in teaching school I beieve the method of schooling is the only real content it has. Don't be fooled into thinking that good curricula or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son or daughter's schooltime.
John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year 1991
The future is that period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and happiness is assured.
We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.
May Lamberton Becker
Changing a college curriculum is like moving a graveyard -- you never know how many friends the dead have until you try to move them.
Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
Simon Strunsky (No Mean City, 1944)
Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go in for politics.
Alliance, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Ambrose Bierce (Cynic's Word Book, 1906)
Art without engineering is dreaming. Engineering without art is calculating.
Steven K Roberts (in "Computing Across America")
Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope for greater favours.
Duc De La Rochefauld
The man of science appears to be the only person who has something to say, and the only man who does not know how to say it.
Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhytm depend on simplicity.
For what good science tries to eliminate, good art seeks to provoke - mystery, which is lethal to the one, and vital to the other.
First impressions are strong impressions; a title ought therefore to be well studied, and to give, so far as it limits permit, a definite and concise indication of what is to come.
T Clifford Allbutt
I Hear, I Forget
I See, I Remember
I Experience, I understand
Chinese proverb
A bad beginning makes a bad ending.
The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Scientific inquiry requires the investigators to challenge the validity and interpretation of evidence; hence the name research.
Wayne G Watson
Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
Manuscripts containing innumerable references are more likely a sign of insecurity than a mark of scholarship.
Great Journals are born in the hands of the editors; they die in the hands of the businessmen.
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
Anonymous
Conference: a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together decide that nothing can be done.
The average PhD thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.
Never fear big words.
Long words name little things.
All big things have little names, such as Life and death, Peace and war, or dawn, day, night, love, home.
Learn to use little words in a big way - It is hard to do. But they say what you mean.
When you don't know what you mean, use big words: They often fool little people.
SSC Booknews, July 1981
I would never use a long word where a short one would answer the purpose. I know there are professors in this country who "ligate" ateries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding as well.
What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants (Isaac Newton)
In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand (Gerald Holton)
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders (Hal Abelson)
In computer science, we stand on each other's feet (Brian K. Reid)
Everyone is the age he has decided on, and I have decided to remain 30.
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (1881-1973)
I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like hat felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success.
Nicola Tesla (1856-1943), inventor of alternating current
The further back you look, the further forward you can see
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes
In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.
Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.
Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never have been.
Theodore von Karman, Hungarian/American Aeoronautical Engineer (1881-1963)
The really valuable factor is intuition.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
It is the genus that gives the characters, and not the characters that make the genus.
Carolus Linnaeus, Swedish Botanist (1707-1778)
Scientific order is logical, natural and forbidding; while alphabetical order is illogical, conventional and inviting.
Hugh Davidson
Plainly then, these are the causes, and this is how many they are. They are four, and the student of nature should know them all, and it will be his method, when stating on account of what, to get back to them all: the matter, the form, the thing which effects the change, and what the thing is for.
Aristotle, Greek Philosopher (384 BC-322 BC)
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
Francis Bacon, English Philosopher and Statesman (1561-1626)
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
It is wrong to say that a good language is important to good thought, merely; for it is the essence of it.
Every young academic must first establish a reputation for being mad or bad, and the safest course would be to cultivate both. Each of them protects you, to some extent, against being asked to sit on committees, mount conferences, edit volumes, referee other peoples ghastly writings or ever talk to people in administration about progressing the implementation of the department's submission to the Quality Assurance Agency. In somewhat straitlaced faculties, stark staring lunacy, really superlative absence of marbles, might even defend one against being made to waste huge chunks of the summer examining,...
Professor Simon Blackburn, Cambridge University, Fellow of Trinity College in the Times Higher Education Supplement, November 2004
To invent an airplane is nothing. To build one is something. But to fly is everything.
Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896), aviation pioneer
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all."
President George Washington in his farewell address, published September 18., 1796
"There is nothing more practical than a good theory."
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
"The Significant Problems We Face Today
Cannot be Solved With the Same
Level of Thinking We Were at
When We Created Them."
To live is not merely to breathe: it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, senses, faculties-of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of existence.
The faculty of imagination is both the rudder and the bridle of the senses.
Man is free at the instant he wants to be
Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.
It is by logic we prove; It is by intuition we discover.
Major advances occur not because the proponents of the established view are forced by the weight of evidence to change their minds, but because they retire and eventually die.
Max Planck (Max Planck's dictum: Science progresses funeral by funeral.)
The Brain - is wider than the Sky -
For - put them side by side -
The one the other will contain
With ease - and You - beside -
Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes.
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
Never think that you're not good enough. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.
One day a man of the people said to Zen master Ikkyu: 'Master, will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?' Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word 'Attention'. 'Is that all?' asked the man. 'Will you add something more?' Ikkyu then wrote twice running 'Attention. Attention'. 'Well', remarked the man irritably, 'I really do'nt see much depth or subtlety in what you have just written.' Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times running: 'Attention. Attention. Attention.' Half-angered, the man demanded: 'What does the word "Attention" mean anyway?' And Ikkyu answered gently: 'Attention means attention.'
The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become wise.
Ecclesiasticus 38:34 (?)
Doubt is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is a ridiculous one
Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
Chuang Tzu (370-301 BC)
Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education.
Chuang Tzu (370-301 BC)
Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
Chuang Tzu (370-301 BC)
Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world which offers fewer and fewer supports.
Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it.
What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude: the aims of friendship, religion, science, and art.
I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.
All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.
would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately triumph than to triumph in a cause that will ultimately fail.
Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.
Larry Lorenzoni
Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got.
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.
Laughter is an interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.
Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Truth and meaning, science and religion; but we still cannot figure out how to get the two of them together in a fashion that both find acceptable... if some sort of reconciliation between science and religion is not forthcoming, the future of humanity is, at best, precarious.
New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the full roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.
We now know a thousand ways not to build a light bulb.
The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.
You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them.
Just because you're a perfectionist doesn't mean you're perfect.
Ultimately all you can do is fix yourself. And that's a lot. Because if you can fix yourself, it has a ripple effect.
If it's not on the Web, it doesn't exist at all!
Sarah Stevens-Rayburn
I ain't Martin Luther King. I don't need a dream. I have a plan.
The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Doctors and scientists said that breaking the four-minute mile was impossible, that one would die in the attempt. Thus, when I got up from the track after collapsing at the finish line, I figured I was dead.
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.
Imagination is a very precise thing, you know — it is not fantasy; the man who invented the wheel while he was observing another man walking — that is imagination!
Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when it is quite clearly Ocean.
Be not ashamed of mistakes and thus make them crimes
Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon and stars
It does not matter how slowly you go as you do not stop
Study without reflection is a waste of time; reflection without study is dangerous
He who rules by moral force is like the pole star, which remains in place while all the lesser stars do homage to it
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is indifferent partly from fear and partly because they are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they have tested them by experience.
Niccolo Machiavelli (in The Prince)
Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
And we must study through reading, listening, discussing, observing and thinking. We must not neglect any one of those ways of study. The trouble with most of us is that we fall down on the latter -- thinking -- because it's hard work for people to think, And, as Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler said recently, 'all of the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think.
Thomas Watson, IBM (1915)
I have six honest servants.
They have taught me all I know,
And their name is:
What and Why,
When and How,
Where and Who
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
Change before you have to
A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is a habit.
It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.
I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often.
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
Find purpose, the means will follow.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
Innovation is the distinction between a leader and a follower.
We shall solve the city problem by leaving the city.
I am a firm believer that without speculation there is no good and original observation.
Charles Darwin, Letter to A.R. Wallace 1857
I think you should take your job seriously, but not yourself — that is the best combination.
The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn.
When you are face to face with a difficulty, you are up against a discovery.
Lord Kelvin (William Thomson, 1824-1907)
When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
Lord Kelvin (William Thomson, 1824-1907)
When everybody knows that something is so, it means that nobody knows nothin’
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
I’ve noticed lately that the paranoid fear of computers becoming intelligent and taking over the world has almost entirely disappeared from the common culture. Near as I can tell, this coincides with the release of MS-DOS.
Larry DeLuca
The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.
Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.
There are only two industries that refer to their customers as ‘users’.
Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival.
There is no substitute for hard work
I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in the old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
The Road of Excess Leads to the Palace of Wisdom.
There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.
An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
Genius was 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
People are wrong who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not studied over and over.
You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
Democracies don't make great products. You need a competent tyrant.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science
Chance favours the prepared mind.
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
—W.B. Yeats, “Among School Children”
Three Rules of Work:
Out of clutter find simplicity;
From discord find harmony;
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.
Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have their head examined.
A display connected to a digital computer gives us a chance to gain familiarity with concepts not realizable in the physical world. It is a looking glass into a mathematical wonderland.
Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds
This paper by its very length defends itself against the risk of being read.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is a habit.
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
Quantum mechanics is certainly impressive. But an inner voice tells me it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One. I am at all events convinced that He does not throw dice.
Waste not life, in the grave will be sleep enough
I’ve always believed that America’s government was a unique political system — one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong. No system can be smart enough to survive this level of incompetence and recklessness by the people charged to run it.
Thomas L. Friedman in New York Times, September 30, 2008
Excellence is in the details. Give attention to the details and excellence will come.
Perry Paxton
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans
You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
-Fitzgerald: "Rich people are different from us"
-Hemingway: "Yes, They have more money"
Conversation in Paris 1920
Never tender your resignation, but rather continue being such a nuisance, that when you are eventually dismissed from your post, you can sue for wrongful dismissal, thus creating a huge amount of publicity and debate about your cause, with the added advantage, that settlement of your tort, is likely to be very generous, if only to shut you up!
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
John Lennon (Imagine)
If you wish to build a ship, don’t drum up men to collect wood and start assigning them
to tasks and work. Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944)
If you can measure that of which you speak, and can express it by a number, you know something of your subject; but if you cannot measure it, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.
It’s amazing how much emotion a little mental concept like ‘my’ can generate.
The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old system and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one.
It is better to be wrong than boring.
Jacob Weiner
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves.
En vakker kvinner er en jeg legger merke til. En sjarmerende kvinne er en som legger merke til meg.
most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong
I think that Cybernetics is the biggest bite out of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that mankind has taken in the last 2000 years
Gregory Bateson (in Steps to an Ecology of Mind)
The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.
The man of science appears to be the only person who has something to say just now,
and the only man who does not know how to say it.
For what science tries to eliminate,
art seeks to provoke
- mystery
which is lethal to the one and vital to the other
There is a certain method in the madness
Science is to challenge the validity and interpretation of evidence;
hence the name research.
Wayne G. Watson
The official language of science is not english – it is bad english.
Anonymous
Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land.
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
He has the most who is most content with the least.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
Why not whip the teacher when the pupil misbehaves?
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance the shimmy, and you've got an audience.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
Things of value are battered for things that are worthless and vice-versa.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire; not too near, lest he burn; not too far off, lest he freeze.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
All things are in common among friends.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
It is better to have one friend of great value than many friends who were good for nothing.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
Man is the most intelligent of the animals -- and the most silly.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
Blushing is the color of virtue.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
I am Diogenes the Cynic, called a dog because I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
All things belong to the gods. The wise are friends of the gods, and friends hold things in common. Therefore all things belong to the wise.
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
If you want to know your past, look into your present conditions.
If you want to know your future, look into your present actions.
~Chinese Proverb
For firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of his fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them. Such actions as the above appear to be the simple result of the greater strength of the social or maternal instincts than that of any other instinct or motive; for they are performed too instantaneously for reflection, or for pleasure or even misery might be felt. In a timid man, on the other hand, the instinct of self-preservation might be so strong, that he would be unable to force himself to run any such risk, perhaps not even for his own child.
Charles Darwin (1809-1888)
(At the beginning of all his PhD courses in Cognitive Psychology at CMU, he used to address his audience):
This is the last lecture I am giving you. From next class on, I will only respond to your questions. This course has plenty of readings. If you don't have questions, it is either because you have not done your reading, or you are too stupid to be in this course.
You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus
its hard to be modest when your as good as I am
unconcerned but not indifferent
Man Ray, photographer epitaph
Taking a wasps' nest... is more effective than catching the wasps one by one
Lord Palmerston(1784-1865), British Statesman
You're never alone with schizophrenia
Unknown
Take care of the pennies the pounds look after themselves
Unknown
I resist everything excempt temptations
Unknown
As manager you have to produce the right words and the right volume to make players very aware of their responsibilities and how they can improve
If you're going to sin, sin against your God, not the bureaucracy.
Your God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.
Unknown
In this philosophy imagination that is sustained is called knowledge, illusion that is coherent is called truth, and will that is systematic is called virtue.
Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub,
It is the centre hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel,
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room,
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there,
Usefulness from what is not there.
You know, Phaedrus, that it is this strange thing about writing, which makes it analogous to painting. The painter's products stand before us as they were alive, but if you question them, they maintain a majestetic silence. It is the same with written words; they seem to talk to you as if they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you the same thing forever.
Socrates (469-399 BC)
It would be easier to teach a brick to sing a melody than to make anyone alter his ways. No one can learn to change the course of his life and no one can be persuaded to transform his innately determined character
Diogenes (413BC-323BC)
If it can be shown, then it should not be spoken, and if it cannot be shown, then it is not worth thinking about
Diogenes of Sinope (413-323BC)
The future is here, it's just not widely distributed yet
Terje Berg (?)
What are the physical phenomena?
What are their magnitudes?
What are their preconditions?
How well are they understood?
How well can they be modeled?
What do they make possible?
What do they forbid?
What is known today?
What are the gaps in what I know?
When would I need to know more to solve a problem?
How could I find it?
There is no moral difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons
I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC. As potential programmers, they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Saying that Java is good because it works on all platforms is like saying anal sex is good because it works on all genders
Unknown
XML is like violence - if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it.
Unknown
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen
Edward V Berard
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.
Hofstadter’s Law
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problem
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
There is but one art, to omit.
Wine is bottled poetry
The price we have to pay for money is sometimes liberty.
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
Judge each day not by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant.
You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else.
Good is the enemy of great.
We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.
Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.
We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.
Doubt is the father of invention
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
All Truths are easy to understand once they are discovered. The point is to discover them.
Nobody does it better
Makes me feel sad for the rest
Nobody does it half as good as you
Baby, you’re the best
Where science does not reach, art, literature and narrative often help us comprehend the reality in which we live.
Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter (2001)
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.
Joseph Heller , Catch-22
Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena are more able to lay down principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development; while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations.
Inquiry is the essence of science, design is the essence of engineering, and in their pure forms, these activities are utterly different. Scientific inquiry draws observations from the world to reshape the mind; engineering design projects ideas from the mind to reshape the world. One is an eye, the other a hand, afferent and efferent flows of information.
In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Harry Lime - the Third Man.
Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.
We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) American Essayist & Poet
I'm willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong.
any technology that works the first time is overdesigned and thus overpriced
We shape our buildings. Thereafter, our buildings shape us
There is no failure. Only feedback.
Robert Allen
Failure is an event, never a person.
If you hit every time, the target is too near or too big.
Tom Hirshfield
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832)
We know accurately only when we know little, with knowledge doubt increases.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832)
One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832)
Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832)
One lives but once in the world.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832)
When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832)
Who rides, so late, through night and wind?
It is the father with his child.
He holds the boy in the crook of his arm
He holds him safe, he keeps him warm.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832)
Noble be man,
Helpful and good!
For that alone
Sets hims apart
From every other creature
On earth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832)
Investigate what is, and not what pleases.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832)
Which is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832)
All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (1749-1832)
Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
Unknown
Man kan ikke kjøpe seg venner for penger. Men man får råd til å holde seg med fiender av ypperste klasse.
People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, Neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.
Ignorance more often begets confidence than does knowledge; it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Charles Darwin, 1871
Lost time is never found again.
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.
Unknown
Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.
Histpry records the names of royal bastards, but cannot tell us the origin of wheat.
Jean Henri Fabre (1823-1915)
O King, traveling over the country, there are royal roads and roads for common citizens; but in geometry there is one road for them all
Menaechmus (380-320 BC), when his pupil Alexander the Great asked for a shortcut to geometry.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam (For the rest, I hold that Carthage must be destroyed)
Marcus Porcius Cato (the elder) (234-149BC)
E pur si muove! (and noneless it moves!)
Giordano Bruno, last cry from the burning stake, 16th February, 1600
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lacked the time to make it short
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Madam, what is the use of a newborn baby?
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) answering a Vicorian lady on the use of his discovery of electromagnetic induction
Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex
Roman saying, freely translated "where there is no patrol car, there is no speed limit"
Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.
The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
Who loves not wine, women and song, Remains a fool his whole life long
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America .not on the battlefields of Vietnam."
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.
Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.
If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search... I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.
The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.
All parts of the body which have a function if used in moderation and exercised in labors in which each is accustomed, become thereby healthy, well developed and age more slowly; but if unused and left idle they become liable to disease, defective in growth and age quickly
A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ..'
Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance
Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person
Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability
War doesn't determine who's right - only who's left.
A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.
Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
If the people who make the decisions are the people who will also bear the consequences of those decisions, perhaps better decisions will result.
Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy.
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
Like I always say, there's no 'I' in "team". There is a 'me', though, if you jumble it up.
An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.
You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result.
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -- that takes religion
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory
The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation.
One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
The truly efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leasure.
With writing as with walking you often find that you’re not heading exactly where you thought you wanted to go. There’ll be missteps and stumbles, journeys into dead ends, the reluctant retracing of your steps. And you have to tell yourself that’s just fine, that it’s a necessary, and not wholly unenjoyable, part of the process. It’s an exploration.
An investment of knowledge always pays the best interest.
What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
It is the theory that describes what we can observe.
The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.
When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong-- or absolutely right.
Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
The best way to compile inaccurate information that no one wants is to make it up.
Language is the source of misunderstandings.
The struggle between social factions does not determine government policy, but it does succeed in focusing people's attention on peripheral issues so that the elite agenda can proceed unimpeded.
A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas.
The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
David Russell
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he know
That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
A symbol is simply the pattern, made of any substance whatsoever that is used to denote, or point to, some other symbol, or object or relation between objects. The thing it points to is called its meaning.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working.
Anonymous
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought
They certainly give very strange names to diseases.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
Ignorance: the root of all evil.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution.
A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds...
With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.
It is quality rather than quantity that matters.
Seneca The Younger (3BC-65AD)
Non vitae sed scholae discim (Not for life, but for school do we learn)
Seneca The Younger (3BC-65AD)
We see people and things not as they are, but as we are.
Anthony de Mello (1931-1987)
Knowledge does not advance practice. Rather practice advances knowledge.
Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin and Monique Sterni
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642)
I am free, no matter what rules surround me. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for every thing I do.
I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead
If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.
Productive work in today's society and economy is work that applies vision, knowledge and concepts -- work that is based on the mind rather than the hand.
Peter F. Drucker (Landmarks of Tomorrow, 1959)
The most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or nonbusiness, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity.
Peter F. Drucker (Management Challenges for the 21st Century, 1999)
We know now that the source of wealth is something specifically human: knowledge. If we apply knowledge to tasks we already know how to do, we call it 'productivity'. If we apply knowledge to tasks that are new and different we call it 'innovation'. Only knowledge allows us to achieve these two goals.
The organizations of the society of organizations are special-purpose organs. Each is good at only one task; and this specialization alone gives them their capacity to perform.
Every knowledge worker in modern organization is an "executive" if, by virtue of his position or knowledge, he is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organization to perform and to obtain results.
Peter F. Drucker (The Effective Executive, 1966)
Instead of capitalists and proletarians, the classes of the post-capitalist society are knowledge workers and service workers.
Peter F. Drucker (Post-Capitalist Society, 1993)
The most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or nonbusiness, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity.
Peter F. Drucker (Management Challenges for the 21st Century, 1999)
Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution
Clay Shirky (the Shirky principle)
Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new technology, it happens when society adopts new behaviors
Love is a temporary insanity curable by marriage
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931) Lebanese-American Poet Philosopher & Artist
Plans for emergencies, for example, are intended to help the organization to deal with unexpected problems and developments for which are designed to be maximally persuasive to regulators, board members, surrounding communities, lawmakers and opponents of the technology, and as a result can become wildly unrealistic. Clarke and Parrow (1996) call them "fantasy documents", that fail to cover most possible accidents, lack any historical record that may function as a reality check, and are quickly based on obsolete contact details, organizational designs, function descriptions and division of responsibility. The problem with fantasy documents is that they can function as an apparently legitimate placeholder that suggests that everything is under control. It inhibits the organization's commitment to continually reviewing and re-assessing its ability to deal ith hazards. In other words, fantasy documents can impede organizational learning as well as organizational preparedness.
David D. Woods, Sidney Dekker, Richard Cook, Leila Johannesen, Nadine Sarter: Behind Human Error, p. 69
Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.
Trust is the bandwidth of communication.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds
You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.
there are no conditions of life to which man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone around him
Lev Tolstoy (Anna Karenina, 1878)
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay
Oliver Goldsmith (The Deserted Village, 1770)
I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle
George Orwell (1903-1950)
No society can be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable
Adam Smith (1723-1790)
The disposition to admire, and almost to warship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect, persons of poor and mean conditions...[is]... the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments
Adam Smith (1723-1790)
Once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the test of an accountant's profit, we have begun to change our civilization
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
The idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.
A free market is paradoxical. If the state does not interfere, then other semipolitical organizations, such as monopolies, trusts, unions, etc. may interfere, reducing the freedom of the market to a fiction.
If voting made any difference, it would be illegal
In the elder days of art
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods are everywhere.
For me my glory is an
Humble ephemeral Absinthe
Drunk on the sly, with fear of treason
and if I drink it no longer,
it is for a good reason
I hated cocaine, but I used to like absinthe which is like marijuana;
drink too much and you suddenly realise why Van Gogh cut off his ear
Humankind cannot bear too much reality
Let me mention that the words or names of things and actions can be thought into a list in two different ways, according to the alphabet and according to nature ... The former go from the word to the thing, the latter from the thing to the world.
The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any university can teach.
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
The general rule of law is, that the noblest of human productions - knowledge, truths, ascertained, conceptions, and ideas - become, after voluntary communication to others, free as air to common use
Louis Brandeis (1918)