Wisdom
Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God. – Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Deep in the unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. – Dune, Frank Herbert
“Give as few orders as possible,” his father had told him… once… long ago. “Once you’ve given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.” – Dune, Frank Herbert
“Any meeting with more than 2 participants is a performance.” – I don’t recall who said this, but it is definitely true.
“Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ―- Terry Pratchett
“I cannot judge what he did, because I did not have his information.” – Lee Kuan Yew
“That was when Father had told Draco about the Rule of Three, which was that any plot which required more than three different things to happen would never work in real life. Father had further explained that since only a fool would attempt a plot that was as complicated as possible, the real limit was two.” – Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality, Eliezer Yudkowsky
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.” – John Gall
“Jim, you can’t beat something with nothing.” – Pierre Sprey, as told by James G. Burton in Pentagon Wars
“You should study your successes. You don’t study your failures. Study your successes. Because when the time comes, you’ll know how to succeed.” – Richard Hamming
“Insights come, but not on schedule.” – Col. Everest E. Riccioni
“It’s hard to measure ‘almost’, because ‘almost’ doesn’t matter.” – Yellowstone (TV, 2018)
“[It] seems Ethernet does not work in theory, only in practice.” – David Boggs, co-inventor of Ethernet
“Don’t confuse comfort with happiness.” -— Dean Karnazes
“But if you want something extraordinary [in your career], you have two paths:
1. Become the best at one specific thing
2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.” – Scott Adams
“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford
“I approached the call like one should when dealing with a manager on the warpath: keep calm, listen intently, and express understanding but remain firm.” – Mick Gordon (link)
“The axe forgets; the tree remembers.”
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.“ —- Mary Oliver
“The first rule of fishing is ‘fish where the fish are,’ and the second rule of fishing is ‘don’t forget rule number one.’ And in investing it’s the same thing.” — Charlie Munger
“Over time, the questions stay the same, but the answers change.” – Allan Lang, paraphrasing a professor he once had
“I figure that it’s better to be a sucker who makes something than a wise guy who is too cautious to make anything at all.” – Henry Darger
“There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.” —- Donella H. Meadows
“A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”
“You’ve got to soend your money for the things that money can buy […] save your energy for the things that money can’s buy.” – from Haruki Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
One of the first interesting experiences I had in this project at Princeton was meeting great men. I had never met very many great men before. But there was an evaluation committee that had to try to help us along, and help us ultimately decide which way we were going to separate the uranium. This committee had men like Compton and Tolman and Smyth and Urey and Rabi and Oppenheimer on it. I would sit in because I understood the theory of how our process of separating isotopes worked, so they’d ask me questions and talk about it. In these discussions, one man would make a point. Then Compton, for example, would explain a different point of view. He would say it should be this way, and he was perfectly right. Another guy would say, well, maybe, but there is this other possibility that we have to consider against it.
So everybody is disagreeing, all around the table. I am surprised and disturbed that Compton doesn’t repeat and emphasize his point. Finally, at the end, Tolman, who’s the chairman, would say, “Well, having heard all these arguments, I guess it’s true that Compton’s argument is the best of all, and now we have to go ahead.”
It was such a shock to me to see that a committee of men could present a whole lot of ideas, each one thinking of a new facet, while remembering what the other fella said, so that, at the end, the decision is made as to which idea was the best—summing it all up—without having to say it three times. These were very great men indeed.
“Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!” Richard P. Feynman (as told to Ralph Leighton (edited by Edward Hutchings)) W. W. Norton, 1985
