Great
Quotes
"It ought to be remembered that 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 lukewarm defenders among
those who may do well under the new."
-
- Machiavelli
The Prince
"Honda was an inventive genius with a large ego and mercurial
temperament, given to bouts of 'philandering' (to use his expression). In
the formative stages of his company, Honda is variously reported to have
tossed a geisha out a second-story window, climbed inside a plastic septic
tank to retrieve a visiting supplier's false teeth (and subsequently
placed the teeth in his mouth), appeared inebriated and in costume before
a formal presentation to Honda's bankers requesting financing vital to the
firm's survival, hit a worker on the head with a wrench, and stripped
naked before his engineers to assemble a motorcycle engine."
- - Tom Peters in "Thriving on Chaos" - Quoting Richard Pacale-co-author Art of Japanese Management
Under the heading, "Only the 'Unreasonable' Champion Can Succeed"
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents
and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die and a
new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
- - Max Planck
Science advances funeral by funeral.
--Unknown (A paraphrase of Planck?)
"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."-
-- Tolstoy
"It is a capital mistake to theorize
before one has data. Insensibly
one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit
facts."
-- Sherlock Holmes
(Ed. Note-Fictional he may have been. Right on target he was.)
"There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact
of a new idea."
- Percy Williams Bridgman (1882-1961) U. S. physicist, Nobel Prize, 1946
"I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with
epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by
trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed."
- Max Born (1882-1970) German Physicist. Nobel Prize, 1954.
"Science is not formal logic-it needs the free play of the mind in
as great a degree as any other creative art. It is true that this is a
gift which can hardly be taught, but its growth can be encouraged in those
who already posses it."
- Max Born (1882-1970) German Physicist. Nobel Prize, 1954.
"There ain't no rules around here! We're trying to accomplish something!"
--Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931). (Edison was a hack and an exploiter. Nikola Tesla was the true inventive genius,
but this statement by Edison says a lot)
"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."
- J. D. Watson -The Double Helix-
"In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the
humble reasoning of a single individual."
- Galileo Galilei
"Thus, the task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but
to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody
sees."
- Erwin Schrodinger 1887-1961
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are that
good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
- Howard Aiken
"What, sir? You would make a ship sail against the wind and currents
by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I pray you excuse me. I have no
time to listen to such nonsense."
- Napoleon Bonaparte to Robert Fulton, upon hearing of the latter's plans
for a steam-powered engine.
"That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done ... The bomb will
never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives."
- U.S. Admiral William D. Leahy to President Truman, on atomic weaponry
(1945)
"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of
yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow."
- Robert Goddard
"The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of
existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will
never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea."
- Max Planck
"The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively not by the
false appearance of things present and which mislead into error, not
directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion,
by prejudice."
- Schopenhauer
"When I examined myself and my methods of thought, I came to the
conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent
for absorbing positive knowledge."
- A. Einstein
"Perhaps the only thing that saves science from invalid conventional
wisdom that becomes effectively permanent is the presence of mavericks in
every generation - people who keep challenging convention and thinking up
new ideas for the sheer hell of it or from an innate contrariness."
- Dr. D. M. Raup, Paleontologist, U. Chicago.
"The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally
confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature... It is this
sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents
the most significant contribution of twentieth-century science to the
human intellect."
- Lewis Thomas
When leading authorities are all in agreement, they are almost always
wrong.
- An Old Axiom
Almost everything that almost everyone believes is wrong.
- Andrew J. Galambos
"Great thinkers have always encountered violent opposition from
mediocre minds"
- Albert Einstein
"The truth of today was the heresy of yesterday. Therefore,
dare."
- Immanuel Velikovsky.
Freedom of the press is free to he who owns the press.
Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an un-habitual
way.
- William James
Inventions rarely come from people within an industry, but, instead come
from people on the outside who aren't under the same limiting beliefs
& habitual thinking that forms within any organization or industry.-
- Dr. James Asher
San Jose State University
Author on Advanced Learning
"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science
have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new
discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be
looked for in the sixth place of decimals."
- Albert. A. Michelson, speech at the dedication of Ryerson Physics Lab,
U. of Chicago, 1894
"Never attribute to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by
stupidity."
- Robert Heinlein
"X-rays are a hoax."
- Lord Kelvin, engineer and physicist (c. 1900)
