The study of decision making is, in many ways, the study of search and attention.
-James March
an idea is a combination of other ideas... Every amazing creative thing you’ve ever seen, or idea you’ve
ever heard can be broken down into smaller ideas that existed before.
-Scott Berkun
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
-Benjamin Franklin
The goal is to transform data into information, and information into insight.
-Carly Fiorina
There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.
-R. W. Hamming
Insight is the first condition of Art.
-George H. Lewes
Chess is the art of analysis.
-Botvinnik
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
-H. H. Williams
The heavy work is getting the problem statement right.
-Daniel E. Geer
Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.
-Kahlil Gibran
The best vision is insight.
-Malcom S. Forbes
Es ist nicht gesagt dass es besser wird, wenn es anders wird. Wenn es aber besser werden soll, muss es anders werden.
(Loosely translated: Different is not necessarily better. But better is necessarily different.)
-Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
-T. S. Eliot
Men are afraid to rock the boat in which they hope to drift safely through life's currents, when, actually, the boat
is stuck on a sandbar. They would be better off to rock the boat and try to shake it loose.
-Thomas Szasz
Whether we dare or not, whether we aspire or not, and whether we care or not, will determine the paths in our lives.
Only if we dare to try, can we possibly succeed. Life will pass by more quickly than we may realize, and we must seize the
opportunities as they come. We must dare to take a chance when we have the chance, or that chance may never surface again.
Risk, chance, and dare! As Mark Twain says, "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't
do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover." With dares come uncertainties, but the rewards will far outweigh them.
-Jayaram Srinivasan, Franklin Regional High School Commencement, Murrysville, PA -- June 4, 1997
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to
take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have
done well under the old conditions, and only lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.
-Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince, 1513)
And I started asking [to the other scientists at his lunch table], ``What are the important problems of your field?''
And after a week or so, ``What important problems are you working on?'' And after some more time I came in one day and said,
``If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at
Bell Labs working on it?'' I wasn't welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat [lunch] with!
-R. W. Hamming
There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts
that people cannot think.
-R. W. Hamming
You should do your job in such a fashion that others can build on top of it, so they will indeed say, ``Yes, I've stood
on so and so's shoulders and I saw further.'' The essence of science is cumulative. By changing a problem slightly you can
often do great work rather than merely good work.
-R. W. Hamming
If you read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they thought. If you want to think new thoughts
that are different, then do what a lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at
any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem
to be the correct one.
-R. W. Hamming
Beware of finding what you're looking for.
-R. W. Hamming
During my thirty years of practicing mathematics in industry, I often worried about the predictions I made. From the
mathematics that I did in my office I confidently (at least to others) predicted some future events-if you do so and so, you
will see such and such-and it usually turned out that I was right. How could the phenomena know what I had predicted (based
on human-made mathematics) so that it could support my predictions? It is ridiculous to think that is the way things go. No,
it is that mathematics provides, somehow, a reliable model for much of what happens in the universe. And since I am able to
do only comparatively simple mathematics, how can it be that simple mathematics suffices to predict so much?
-R. W. Hamming
The emotion at the point of technical breakthrough is better than wine, women and song put together
-R. W. Hamming
Mathematics is the language of precise thinking
-R. W. Hamming
[R.W. Hamming on his approach to research] I did more than the minimum, I looked deeper into the nature of the
problem. This constant effort to understand more than the surface feature of a situation obviously prepares you to see new
and slightly different applications of your knowledge. ...as is often said, it is in the struggle and not the success that
the real gain appears. In striving to do great things, you change yourself into a better person, so they claim. The actual
success is of less importance, so they say. And I tend to believe this theory.
-R. W. Hamming
[Hamming was a professor at the University of Louisville during World War II, and left to work on the Manhattan Project
in 1945, programming one of the earliest electronic digital computers to calculate the solution to equations provided by the
project's physicists. The objective of the program was to discover if the detonation of an atomic bomb would ignite the atmosphere.
The result of the computation was that this would not occur, and so the United States used the bomb, first in a test in New
Mexico, and then twice against Japan. Later, between 1946-1976 he worked at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he collaborated
with Claude E. Shannon. - Wikipedia]
An essential part of seeing clearly is finding the willingness to look closely and to go beyond our own ideas.
-Cheri Huber
Becoming a real researcher has been the ultimate humbling experience for me. Nature is the examiner from hell; if you
find new things at all, you always find them the hard way, with sweat and tears. Only then do you notice that there was a
really easy way to find them. But this insight rarely arrives before you have been utterly humiliated and reduced to despair.
-Joao Magueijo
If you have no eyes, do not walk blindly;
take a staff in your hand.
If you have no staff of insight,
do not
walk without a guide.
-Rumi, From "The Bounty of Allah," translated by Aneela Khalid Arshed.
To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.
-George Kneller
Indecision may or may not be my problem.
-Jimmy Buffett
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is
not good.
-Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)
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.
-Vannevar Bush (1890 - 1974)
A chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial
human enterprise.
-George Steiner
Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.
-Gene Fowler
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-E. W. Dijkstra
Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
-Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
-Steve Jobs (1955 - )
A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.
-George S. Patton (1885 - 1945)
Men have become the tools of their tools.
-Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Fortune favors the brave.
-Virgil (70 BC - 19 BC), Aeneid
Ignorance never settles a question.
-Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)
That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
-Paul Valery (1871 - 1945)
Do not fear going forward slowly; fear only to stand still.
-Chinese Proverb
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
-Duke Ellington (1899 - 1974)
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
-Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962)
Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.
-Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996), Cosmos (Blues for a Red Planet) US astronomer & popularizer of astronomy (1934 - 1996)
He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.
-Hunter S. Thompson (1939 - 2005)
As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.
-Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
-Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)
My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit.
He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.
-Indira Gandhi (1917 - 1984)
What I am actually saying is that we need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow
that guidance directly and fearlessly.
-Shakti Gawain
Frankly, I’m suspicious of anyone who has a strong opinion on a complicated issue.
-Scott Adams (1957 - ), The Dilbert Blog
No one can speak well, unless he thoroughly understands his subject.
-Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)
A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.
-Wayne Gretzky (1961 - )
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.
-James Boswell (1740 - 1795), Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791
Everything is connected... no one thing can change by itself.
-Paul Hawken
We most often go astray on a well trodden and much frequented road.
-Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD)
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945)
If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.
-Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992) D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945)
The wise are instructed by reason; ordinary minds
by experience; the stupid, by necessity; and brutes by instinct.
-Cicero
It's all knowing what to start with. If you start in the right place and follow all the steps, you will get to the right
end.
-Elizabeth Moon, The Speed of Dark, 2003
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get
on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
-George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), "Mrs. Warren's Profession" (1893) act II
Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.
-James Russell Lowell (1819 - 1891)
It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or
take the risks. Yet most people don't. They sit in front of the telly [television set] and treat life as if it goes on forever.
-Philip Adams
Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it
will make itself felt at the end of the year.
-Horace Mann (1796 - 1859)
When we are born, we cry, that we are come To this great stage of fools.
-William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Play: Work that you enjoy doing for nothing.
-Evan Esar (1899 - 1995), Esar's Comic Dictionary
The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth
Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.
-Louis I Kahntionary
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
-J. R. R. Tolkien (1892 - 1973)
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of
the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
-Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970), Marriage and Morals (1929) ch. 5
Engineering is an activity other than purely manual and physical work which brings about the utilization of the materials
and laws of nature for the good of humanity.
-R. E. Hellmund, 1929
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate
between what you do know and what you don't.
-Anatole France (1844 - 1924)
The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
-Charles Du Bos
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses
his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
-Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
To be intelligent is to be open-minded, active, memoried, and persistently experimental.
-Leopold Stein
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may
have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.
-Popular Mechanics, March 1949
Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.
-John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)
It is only with one's heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.
-Antoine de Saint-Exup�ry (1900 - 1944), The Little Prince
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
-George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists" [JLJ note: I am 44]
What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy
-Voltaire
The consequences of our actions are so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business
indeed.
-J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
