Thoughts III

Famous Quotes I Keep close to Heart

~ Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to fly, it will live his whole life believing that it is stupid.

Misattributed to Albert Einstein, uncertain origin

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Presumably Eleanor Roosevelt, 20th century 

"Rage, rage, against the dying of the night."

Dylan Thomas, 20th century Welsh poet, poem "Do not go gently into that good night" 

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"If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."

David Hume, 18th century Scottish philosopher

Know thyself.

Greek aphorism inscribed in the Temple of Apollo, Delphi

[COMMENT] The older I get, the more I realize our journey always come back to this.

"We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell." 

Oscar Wilde, 19th century Irish poet 

"If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate."

Thomas Watson Jr., 20th century American businessman

[COMMENT] I daresay most things I do are plain wrong in the first attempt. This is like a warm-up phase. Iterate, iterate...

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, 16th century Italian polymath 

[COMMENT] Personal hero here.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Waldo", 19th century American essayist 

~Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Attributed to either Tony Hoare or Donald Knuth, uncertain; British and American 20th century computer scientists, respectively

"No man is an island entire of itself."

John Donne; British 17th century poet and cleric, in Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, excerpt here.

"The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is mere tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure. The process is its own reward."

Amelia Earhart, 19th century American aviator

"We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons."

Emanuel James "Jim" Rohn, 20th century American entrepreneur and motivational speaker

[COMMENT] One must be wary into taking to heart everything a motivational speaker says, but there is truth to those words. 

True change is within. Leave the outside as it is.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, 20th century Tibetan spiritual leader 

BANNER IMAGE CREDITS: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Rosario et al. 

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