Fluids Geek - Quotes

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself -- it is the occurring which is difficult.

           Stephen Leacock

        A HANGING
It was about forty yards to the gallows.
I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me.
He walked clumsily, with his bound arms, but quite steadily,
with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knees.
At each step his muscles slid neatly into place,
the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down,
his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel.
And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder,
he stepped slightly aside . . . to avoid a puddle on the path.
When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle,
I saw the mystery,
the unspeakable wrongness . . .
     George Orwell

Beware the symptomatic solution. Solutions that address only the symptoms of a problem, not fundamental causes, tend to have short-term benefits at best. In the long term, the problem resurfaces and there is increased pressure for symptomatic response. Meanwhile, the capability for fundamental solutions can atrophy.

           Peter M. Senge
            The Fifth Discipline, p104

When was the last time someone was rewarded in your organization for raising difficult questions about the company's current policies rather than solving urgent problems?

                Peter M. Senge
                The Fifth Discipline, p25

'I do what I do because it is the one and only thing that I can do at all well. I am a lawyer, or a stockbroker, or a professional cricketer, because I have some real talent for that particular job. I am a lawyer because I have a fluent tongue, and am interested in legal subtleties; I am a stockbroker because my judgement of the markets is quick and sound; I am a professional cricketer because I can bat unusually well. I agree that it might be better to be a poet or a mathematician, but unfortunately I have no talent for such pursuits.'

I am not suggesting that this is a defence which can be made by most people, since most people can do nothing at all well. But it is impregnable when it can be made without absurdity, as it can by a substantial minority: perhaps five or even ten per cent of men can do something rather well. It is a tiny minority who can do anything really well, and the number of men who can do two things well is negligible. If a man has any genuine talent, he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full.

                   G. H. Hardy
                   A Mathematician's Apology, pp67-8

This is the true joy of life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no "brief candle" to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

                    George Bernard Shaw

"Some mathematics clearly is a human invention," he says, most notably anything that depends on the fact that we use a 10-digit numbering system. "But I think some mathematics does exist before its discovery. Take the Pythagorean theorem. That has been independently rediscovered several times by various civilizations. It's really there. Presumably if there were small furry creatures doing mathematics on Alpha Centauri prime, they would also have some version of the Pythagorean theorem."

                  Richard Borcherds
                  "Profile", Scientific American, Nov. 1998, p40

... It may be that modern physics fits best into some framework of idealistic philosphy -- I do not believe it, but there are eminent physicists who say so. Pure mathematics, on the other hand, seems to me a rock on which all idealism founders: 317 is a prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in one way rather than another, but because it is so, because mathematical reality is built that way.

                   G. H. Hardy
                   A Mathematician's Apology, p130

The case for my life, then, or for that of any one else who has been a mathematician in the same sense in which I have been one, is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more; and that these somethings have a value which differs in degree only, and not in kind, from that of the creations of the great mathematicians, or of any of the other artists, great or small, who have left some kind of memorial behind them.

                   G. H. Hardy
                   A Mathematician's Apology, p151

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last modified 17:10:54 Monday February 19 2001