103 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
103 lines
3.3 KiB
Markdown
---
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id:
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aliases: []
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title: Favorite Quotes
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tags:
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- authorship/original
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- destiny/fleeting
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- status/draft
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- topic/writing
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- type/encyclopedia-entry
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---
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# Favorite Quotes
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## About Tools
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> [!quote] John Culkin, commonly attributed to Marshall McLuhan
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> We shape our tools and, thereafter, our tools shape us.
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> [!quote] _[[thoreau_1854_walden|Walden]]_, Henry David Thoreau
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> Men have become the tools of their tools.
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> [!quote] Jeff Duntemann
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> A good tool improves the way you work.
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> A great tool improves the way you think.
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> [!quote] Alan Watts
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> We are sick with a fascination
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> for the useful tools of names and numbers,
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> of symbols, signs, conceptions, and ideas.
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> [!quote] Paul Arden
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> If you get stuck, draw with a different pen.
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> Change your tools; it may free your thinking.
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## About Process Optimization
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### "It Takes an Engineer to Build a Bridge that Barely Stands"
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> [!quote] Unknown
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> Any idiot can build a bridge that stands.
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> It takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.
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The phrase "exceeds specifications"
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ought not be universally perceived as positive when divorced from context like it is.
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It is often the case that exceeding minimum requirements is easy,
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and that the difficulty (the kind that you pay people to handle)
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is in meeting them precisely.
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In the case of civil infrastructure,
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it is intuitive that even though a 10% safety factor is _good_,
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a 100% safety factor is not _better_.
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It is _so_ intuitive that the choice of "_barely_ stands",
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I don't think would give many pause or reservation.
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However, divorced from context,
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people are biased to believe that more of a good thing must be better,
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especially when what's compromised isn't as tangible as dollars on an invoice.
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### "Sharpen the Axe"
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Frequently misattributed to Abraham Lincoln is some variation of:
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> [!quote]
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> Give me six hours to chop down a tree
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> and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
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For the legitimate origin of the quote see [[reverend-william-h-alexander]].
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I think when people use some version of the quote in real life
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it's usually to justify second definition [yak shaving](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving)
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(at least that's usually when I use it).
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> [!quote] Ecclesiastes 10:10, King James Version
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> If the iron be blunt,
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> and he do not whet the edge,
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> then must he put to more strength:
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> but wisdom _is_ profitable to direct.
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I like the story because it's well known
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and easily interpreted as an [optimization problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimization_problem).
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## About Learning
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> [!quote] [[hubbard_2020_failure#Why It's Hard To Know What Works]]
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> The placebo effect might not be as persistent
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> if it were easier to learn from our experience...
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> But learning is not a given in any environment.
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## About Originality
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> [!quote] Brian Eno, _A Year With Swollen Appendices_, p. 67
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> A way of doing something original is by trying something so painstaking
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> that nobody else has ever bothered with it.
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## About Hypocrisy
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> [!quote] Luke 6:42, King James Version
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> Either how canst thou say to thy brother,
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> Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye,
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> when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
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> Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye,
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> and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye. |