Quotes

Science

Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.

W. Edwards Deming, American statistician

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than [it] does knowledge

Charles Darwin 1809-1882

Burden of Proof

That which can be asserted with out evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
The burden of proof is on the claimant.
If the claimant makes a claim it is up to that person to prove it.

Christopher Hitchens, 1949 – 2011

The learning process is all about working your way out of confusion. Articulating your question is 80 percent of the battle. By the time you’ve figured out what’s confusing, you’re likely to have answered the question yourself!”

Kenneth R. Leopold, Department of Chemistry, University of Minnesota

Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs

Edsger W. Dijkstra 1930-2020

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely 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 1897-1937

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Hanlon’s ravor

An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question.

John Tukey (1915-2000) American statistician
Paraphrased in Super Freakonomics(?) or “The future of data analysis,” Annals of Mathematical Statistics 33 (1) (1962)

In my perspective … science and computer science is a liberal art, it’s something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It’s not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It’s something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have mastery of to some extent.

Steve Jobs (Fresh Air 1996 Interview)

Machine learning is essentially a form of applied statistics with increased emphasis on the use of computers to statistically estimate complicated functions and a decreased emphasis on proving confidence intervals around these functions”

Ian Goodfellow

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it

Brian W. Kernighan

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think - I know, I will use regular expressions. Now they have two problems

Jamie Zawinski

A language that does not affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing

Alan Perlis

There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors

Leon Bambrick

The Law of Serendipity: Lady Luck favors the one who tries (or: who is prepared)

Anon

It’s the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers.

Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

Marie Curie

The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Plato

Philosphical

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Newsweek, 25 August 1986

The world rewards the people who are best at communicating ideas, Not the people with the best ideas.

David Perell

Material development only gives us sensory pleasure, but to be lastingly happy we need to develop our minds. We need calm minds.

If you live your life honestly and truthfully, you’ll be open and transparent, which leads to trust. And trust leads to friendship.

Dalai Lama, 28 Dec 2015

One does not develop courage by being happy in your everyday relationships. One develops it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.

Why should I fear death?
If I am, then death is not.
If death is, then I am not.
Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Epicurus 341-270 BCE

All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself.
All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others.

Shantideva 685-763

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

Jack Kerouac, On the Road 1922-1969

The youth of the world have been ‘going to hell’ for the last 2,000 years.

Charles H. Carpenter Sr.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities,
but in the experts there are few.

Shunyru Suzuki 1904-1971

In a country well goverened poverty is something to be ashamed of,
In a country poorly goverened wealth is something to ashamed of.

Confucius 551-479 BCE

He who is not busy being born is busy dying

Bob Dylan 1941-

From each according to his ability,
to each according to his needs

Karl Marx 1818-1883

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.

John Lennon

Slipped my mind that I could use my brain

The Lemonheads, Rudderless

In Psychology there is a common aphorism ‘The Best Predictor of Future Behavior Is … Past Behavior.’ However investing says, ‘Past Performance Is Not Indicative Of Future Results.’

Road map to effecting change: Jarell(?)

DUSE

  • Decision(s)
  • Understand (problem)
  • Strategize (plan)
  • Execution (do it)

It’s an universal law–

Intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.

Solzhenitsyn’s universal law

We suffer not from the events in our lives,
But from our judgement about them.

Only the educated are free.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

Wherever a man is against his will, that to him is a prison.

If you seek Truth, You will not seek to gain a victory by every possible means; And when you have found Truth, You need not fear being defeated.

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.

Epictetus - 50 AD -135 AD