---
title: Favorite Quotes
tags:
  - destiny/fleeting
  - status/draft
  - topic/writing
  - type/encyclopedia-entry
---
# Favorite Quotes

## About Tools

> [!quote] John Culkin, commonly attributed to Marshall McLuhan
> We shape our tools and, thereafter, our tools shape us.

> [!quote] _[[thoreau_1854_walden|Walden]]_, Henry David Thoreau
> Men have become the tools of their tools.

> [!quote] Jeff Duntemann
> A good tool improves the way you work.
> A great tool improves the way you think.

> [!quote] Alan Watts
> We are sick with a fascination
> for the useful tools of names and numbers,
> of symbols, signs, conceptions, and ideas.

> [!quote] Paul Arden
> If you get stuck, draw with a different pen.
> Change your tools; it may free your thinking.

## About Process Optimization

### "It Takes an Engineer to Build a Bridge that Barely Stands"

> [!quote] Unknown
> Any idiot can build a bridge that stands.
> It takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.

The phrase "exceeds specifications"
ought not be universally perceived as positive when divorced from context like it is.

It is often the case that exceeding minimum requirements is easy,
and that the difficulty (the kind that you pay people to handle)
is in meeting them precisely.

In the case of civil infrastructure,
it is intuitive that even though a 10% safety factor is _good_,
a 100% safety factor is not _better_.
It is _so_ intuitive that the choice of "_barely_ stands",
I don't think would give many pause or reservation.

However, divorced from context,
people are biased to believe that more of a good thing must be better,
especially when what's compromised isn't as tangible as dollars on an invoice.

### "Sharpen the Axe"

Frequently misattributed to Abraham Lincoln is some variation of:

> [!quote]
> Give me six hours to chop down a tree
> and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

For the legitimate origin of the quote see [[reverend-william-h-alexander]].

I think when people use some version of the quote in real life
it's usually to justify second definition [yak shaving](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving)
(at least that's usually when I use it).

> [!quote] Ecclesiastes 10:10, King James Version
> If the iron be blunt,
> and he do not whet the edge,
> then must he put to more strength:
> but wisdom _is_ profitable to direct.

I like the story because it's well known
and easily interpreted as an [optimization problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimization_problem).

## About Learning

> [!quote] [[hubbard_2020_failure#Why It's Hard To Know What Works]]
> The placebo effect might not be as persistent
> if it were easier to learn from our experience...
> But learning is not a given in any environment.

## About Originality

> [!quote] Brian Eno, _A Year With Swollen Appendices_, p. 67
> A way of doing something original is by trying something so painstaking
> that nobody else has ever bothered with it.

## About Hypocrisy

> [!quote] Luke 6:42, King James Version
> Either how canst thou say to thy brother,
> Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye,
> when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
> Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye,
> and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye.

## About Estimating

> [!quote] Tom Cargill, Bell Labs
> The first 90 percent of the code
> accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time.
> The remaining 10 percent of the code
> accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.

> [!quote] Hofstadter's law
> It always takes longer than you expect,
> even when you take into account Hofstadter's law.