Ben Franklin was the founder of many astute aphorisms and pithy proverbs. Through his aphorisms, Franklin captured the beliefs and enthusiasms of America’s founding generation.
I am a fan of aphorisms to pass on understandings and general truths. A good aphorism stands the test of time. The following are some of my favorite aphorisms. I have placed them in different categories. Though, as is the case with a good aphorism, they tend to defy categorization.
Also, I have added some of my own entries. I will leave it to the reader as to whether my entries are worthy!
Categories:
History
Emotional control
Evolution
Rationality
Risk Management
Intelligence and Knowledge
Faith and Philosophy
Teaching
Fear
Leadership
Work & Success
Change and Time
Business
Political economy
Science
1. History
The Greek philosopher Thucydides was the first to observe,
“History repeats itself,”
but Karl Marx added,
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.”
Playing off Marx’s view of history as a cosmic joke, Mark Twain noted,
“History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme a lot.”
I said. probably because I heard it from someone else / take off on Twain:
“History doesn't repeat itself but it does resemble itself. “
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
- George Santayana
“Those who do not remember [the great examples of love] are condemned to be less likely to repeat these reasons to hope.”
- Robert Sapolsky
(See chapter 17 of Behave for Sapolsky’s great examples of love)
“A mistake is not something to determine after the fact, but in light of the information to that point.”
- NN Taleb
2. Emotional control
“You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing things with logic. True power is restraint. If words control you that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.”
- Warren Buffett
3. Evolution
“A chicken is just an egg’s way of making another egg.”
“Evolution is a tinkerer, not an inventor”
“The road to hell is paved with rationalization.”
- Robert Sapolsky, Behave
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly”
- Robert F Kennedy
Normalcy is the antithesis of evolution.
- Siddhartha Mukherjee
Evolution is no longer our friend, because our environment has changed much faster than our genome ever could.
- Peter Attia
4. Rationality
“Rationality is individually defined and relates to unique framing and incentives.”
- Jeff Hulett
“It seemed like a good idea at the time”
- quote relating to framing and incentives.
“Universal rationality is a boundary condition of individual human behavior. Universal rationality may or may not converge on an individual's behavior but it rarely resembles the behavior.”
- Jeff Hulett
“The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”
- NN Taleb. I.e., just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it is not there...
“Markets look less efficient from the banks of the Hudson than from the banks of the Charles”
- Fischer Black
“...what is rational is that which allows for survival”
“Not everything that happens happens for a reason, but everything that survives survives for a reason.”
- NN Taleb, Skin In The Game
“Being intelligent is understanding the difference between price and value. Being rational is arbitraging the two.”
- Jeff Hulett
Hofstadter's Law: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.”
- D. Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach
“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do sir?”
- John Maynard Keynes (maybe)
”A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.”
- George Carlin
“Before you criticize someone you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.”
- Jack Handey, Saturday Night Live Writer
"I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions."
- Stephen Covey
“Rationality is not for winning debates, it is for deciding what side to join.” - Eliezer Yudkowski
“Every improvement is a change, but not every change is an improvement.”
- Eliezer Yudkowski
"...reality is constantly being redrawn in images that are increasingly effective."
- Carlo Rovelli
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."
- Theodosius Dobzhansky
"It is with an objective mind endowed with a curious skepticism that we should engage in careful analysis and seek the reasons [behind our beliefs]. Then, on the basis of seeing the reasons, we engender a faith that is accompanied by wisdom."
- The Dalai Lama
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" - The Wizard of Oz (1939)
The Wizard of Oz provides a relevant example of authority bias leading to confirmation bias and an error of omission.
"(Rational decision-making) is a problem of the utilization of knowledge not given to anyone in its totality."
- F A Hayek
The innovator’s truism
"Implementing good ideas always takes longer than you think — even when you take into account the longer than you think."
- Jeff Hulett
5. Risk Management
“Perfect is the enemy of good”
- Voltaire and related to the Pareto Principal - 80/20 rule,
see also Arthur Rudolph leaky valve toleration quote found in Against The Gods
"When the capital development of a country becomes the by product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done." - John Maynard Keynes
to wit: house flipping, day trading, state run lottery
“Goals are not always achieved as planned, but planning is necessary to achieve any goal.”
- Jeff Hulett
"Plans are useless, but planning is indespensable."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
“Risk and time are opposite sides of the same coin, for if there were no tomorrow there would be no risk. Time transforms risk, and the nature of risk is shaped by the time horízon: the future is the playing field.”
-Peter Berenstein, Against the God
“Investment risk management is a function of time.”
- Jeff Hulett, Investment Thoughts For My Children
“Well informed investors diversify because they do not believe that investing is a form of entertainment.”
- Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods
“Fragility is (negative) sensitivity to disorder” - NN Taleb, Skin In The Game.
(More specifically, That which is fragile has an asymmetric response to volatility and other stressors, that is, will experience more harm than benefit from it. )
“Rationality is risk management.”
- NN Taleb, Skin In he Game.
“Don't test the depth of the river with both your feet...”
- Warren Buffett
“There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable.” - Thomas Schilling
“We all hope for the best, but we need to be ready in the event the best isn’t what we hoped.”
- Jeff Hulett
“One may be risk loving yet completely adverse to ruin.”
- NN Taleb, Skin In The Game.
I think of the barbell approach to investing. Majority of your investments should be in well diversified, risk appropriate investments. This gives you room for a few riskier investments, with a minority of your capital.
“The time value of money benefits the young, but the young don’t appreciate the time value of money”
- Jeff Hulett
“Measure twice, cut once”
- proverb, I couldn’t find the definitive author
“Money adds meta data to economic interaction (value, risk, etc) much the way neurotransmitters add meta data to sensory input (fear, greed, love, etc).”
- George Dyson
In the short term:
“That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
[to wit: working out or short term work stress builds strength.]
In the long term:
“That which doesn’t kill you makes you weaker”
- Jeff Hulett
[to wit: commuting or bad relationships may lead to stress / glucocorticoid related issues like cancer or diabetes.]
”When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”
- Goodhart’s Law
”The market can stay wrong longer than you can stay solvent”
- John Maynard Keynes (maybe)
“In my view, good regulation is consistent over time, acting as a countercyclical guidepost to balance the natural swings of our economy.”
- Jeff Hulett
”Only when the tide goes out can we see who has been swimming naked.”
- Warren Buffett
"Investing in diverse plant communities is a lower-risk strategy than investing in just one species.”
- Suzanne Simard
(on why mycorrhizal fungal networks broker carbon between trees)
"I judge a person's intentions by weighing their actions higher than their words."
- Jeff Hulett
“An algorithm is just a tool. Data is a representation of past reality. Don’t blame the tool for our past mistakes…. fix the mistakes as found in our past reality.”
- Jeff Hulett
“The problem with the ‘Malthusian Fallacy’ is you don’t find out it is a fallacy until after the sky doesn’t fall.”
- Jeff Hulett
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take - Wayne Gretzky”
- Michael Scott
“I know every gain must have a loss
So pray that our loss is nothing but time.”
- The Mills Brothers
“Nothing is permanent, but the illusion of permanence can last a long time.”
- Freeman Dyson
"Doubt is not a pleasant state but certainty is a ridiculous one."
- Voltaire
"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skills; but time and chance happeneth to them all."
- Ecclesiastes 9:11
When smart people underestimate complexity, the fall prey to the perils of unintended consequences. When uninformed people overestimate complexity, the fall into the trap of unanticipated consequences.
- Siddhartha Mukherjee
“No enemy is worse than bad advice.”
- Sophocles
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair
"Managing metabolism -- like healthy habits preventing insulin resistance or diabetes -- is the cornerstone to a long life."
- Peter Attia
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt."
- Richard Feynman
"There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable.”
– Thomas Schelling
"The best strategy depends on whether you are the gamble or the gambler"
- Luca Dellanna
"When managing life's challenges - learning something that was unknown is better than getting surprised by the unknown. When experiencing life's joy - the opposite it true. This is called serendipity."
- Jeff Hulett
"To be to be deprived of that which we are possessed of is a greater evil than to be disappointed of that to which we have the expectation."
- Adam Smith
The regulator's paradox:
"There is a difference between guardrails and limiting choice. Guardrails protect society by taking away things that reduce welfare. Limiting choice reduces welfare by limiting innovation."
The regulator's risk:
In the regulator's zeal to prevent the bad thing from happening again, the regulatory paradox unwittingly limits choice and sows the seeds for the next bad thing."
- Jeff Hulett
The regulators mantra:
"Be parsonious when constructing the guardrails, be generous when enabling choice. "
- Jeff Hulett
"Prescriptive regulation does a great job preventing the bad thing that already happened from happening again. While also creating incentives to ignore the bad things that are sure to come."
- Jeff Hulett
"If necessity is the mother of invention, then timing is the mother of contingency."
- Brian Klaas
6. Intelligence and knowledge
“While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it is curiosity that fulfills the eye.”
- Jeff Hulett
“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
- James Baldwin
“There are no geniuses, really, only what people make with what they are given - that, and a confluence of circumstances.”
- Justus Rosenberg, The Art of Resistance
“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that a tomato doesn't belong in a fruit salad.”
- Miles Kington
(May 13,1941 – January, 30 2008) was a British journalist, musician and broadcaster)
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
- Albert Einstein
(Also, the Psychologist Iain McGilchrist wrote an entire book about this, called The Master and His Emissary)
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
- Arthur Conan Doyle
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
- Bertrand Russell
This aphorism reminds me of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
“When we cannot formulate a problem with precision, it is often not because the problem is profound: it is because the problem is false”
- Carlo Rovelli
“Intelligence should be viewed as a physical process that tries to maximize future freedom of action and avoid constraints in its own future.” (F = T ∇ Sτ)
- Alex Wissner-Gross
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”
- Carl Sagan and others
“Transforming communication into thought feeds an introverts energy.
Transforming thought into communication feeds an extroverts energy.
Combining the energy creates intelligence.”
- Jeff Hulett
“When an image is produced by an action upon the external
senses, the actions on the organs of sense concur with the actions in the brain; and the image is then a Reality. When an image occurs to the mind without a corresponding simultaneous action of the body, it is called a Thought. The power to distinguish between a thought and a reality is called Consciousness,"
- William Smee, Principles of the Human Mind deduced from Physical Laws
(Taking it a step further, it is the entrepreneur that can transform a thought into reality)
“All intelligence is collective. Intelligence arises by the accumulation of random bits of wisdom through the power of small mistakes.”
- Alan Turing
as presented by George Dyson in Darwin Among The Machines.
“I created a vision of David in my mind and simply carved away everything that was not David.”
- Michelangelo
"The essence of genius is to know what to overlook."
- William James
"Art is the elimination of the unnecessary."
- Pablo Picasso
“Where is the wisdom?
Lost in the knowledge.
Where is the knowledge?
Lost in the information.” - T. S. Eliot
“Where is the information?
Lost in the data.
Where is the data?
Lost in the damn database!” - Joe Celko
"the best we can do is to divide all processes into those things which can be better done by machines and those which can be better done by humans and then invent methods by which to pursue the two."
- John von Neumann
“Luck is where preparation and opportunity meet.”
- Seneca
- Jeff Hulett
“There is a difference between empathy and agreement”
(After the September 11 terror attacks, Bhuiyan was one of several people shot by white supremacist Mark Anthony Stroman. Bhuiyan survived, but lost sight in one of his eyes.)
“To get at the heart of intelligence, we should have started by looking at the part of human life ordinarily considered "irrational," the opposite of "logical," that perennial problem for computers: emotions.”
- Ellen Ullman, Life In Code
“It is easy to lie with statistics - but it is even easier to lie without them.”
- Tim Harford, The Data Detective
"We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge."
- John Naisbitt, Megatrends
”When we know better, we do better”
- Dr. Maya Angelou
“To attain knowledge add things every day. To attain wisdom subtract things every day.”
- Lao Tzu
“Our knowledge is amazing; our ignorance even more so.”
- Donella Meadows
"Stupid is as stupid does"
- said by the main character in the movie Forest Gump
“Curiosity is the gateway to the past, probability is the gateway to the future, and now is the gateway to change.”
- Jeff Hulett
"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."
- General George S. Patton
"The test of first rate intelligence is the ability to
hold two opposed ideas in the mind at once, and still retain the ability to function."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Once a social work (article, book, art, etc) reaches a consideration tipping point, it is consider through a relative lens.... a relative lens of larger acceptance or refutation. The challenge is getting it considered."
- Jeff Hulett
"Progress enables a spirit of skepticism to overcome prevailing truths by allowing a spirit of investigation to come into full flower."
- Henry Thomas Buckle
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Learning and neuroplasticity occur because "Neurons that fire together, wire together."
- Donald Hebb
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge."
- Daniel J. Boorstin
"Be curious, not judgmental"
- Walt Whitman
"The key to producing ongoing and compelling creative content - be consistent but not predictable."
- Jeff Hulett
“Our ability to be ‘knowledgeable’ is much less about acquiring knowledge and much more about our impartial ability to apply that knowledge.”
- Jeff Hulett
"I prefer true but imperfect knowledge, even if it leaves much undermined and unpredictable, to a pretense of exact knowledge that is likely to be false."
- F.A. Hayek
7. Faith and Philosophy
“Religion is a faith delivery vehicle. Engaging the vehicle supports our faith journey and helps us achieve joy.” - Jeff Hulett
"Faith is the difference between what science teaches us today and the uncertainty of reaching our future goals."
- Jeff Hulett
“Yet, fundamentally, all spiritual traditions perform the same function, which is to help us tame our mental state, overcome our negativities and perfect our inner potential.”
- Dalai Lama, An Introduction to Buddhism
“Money does not buy you happiness, but a lack of money certainly buys you misery.”
- Daniel Kahneman
“The good day
A good marriage is
- One part personality compliment,
- Two parts faith alignment, and
- All parts honest and patient.
A good business partnership is
- One part skill and ability compliment
- Two parts value alignment
- All parts honest and patient.
Let’s be good today....”
- Jeff Hulett
“Marriage advice: Make sure your crazy is complementary.”
- Jeff Hulett
“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage.”
– Brene Brown
“I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.” - Philippians 4:13
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” - 1 Corinthians 13:13
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Nothing is impossible with God.”
- Luke 1:37
“A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.”
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children“
-Wendell Berry
“Keep your thoughts positive because your thought become YOUR WORDS.
Keep your words positive because your words become YOUR BEHAVIOR
Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes YOUR HABITS
Keep your habits positive because your habits become YOUR VALUES
Keep your values positive because your values become YOUR DESTINY”
-Mahatma Gandhi
"The only way we appreciate something good is by understanding the bad.
Without the bad, good doesn't exist"
- Jeff Hulett
"We must combine material development with the development of internal, human values."
- The Dalai Lama
“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
—Carl Jung
"Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely"
—Adam Smith, from The Theory of Moral Sentiments
"We desire to be authentically lovely to be deserving of the love we receive from others."
—Jeff Hulett with help from Adam Smith
"Your fellow is your mirror.... should you look upon your fellow and see a blemish, it is your own imperfection that you are encountering - you are being shown what it is that you must correct within yourself."
—Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Jewish Hasidic movement
"It is not up to you to finish the work. But you are not free to desist from it."
—Talmud
"We love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own."
—Marcus Aurelius
"If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now."
—Marcus Aurelius
"Men are disturbed not by the things that happen but by their opinions about those things."
—Epictetus
8. Teaching
“Teaching should endeavor to make the beautiful simple and to make the simple beautiful."
- Justus Rosenberg, The Art of Resistance
"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't."
- Anatole France (1844-1924)
”I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
- Mark Twain
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
- Maimonides
"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."
- Ben Franklin
“The motivation of the speaker provides meaning to what is said or not said more than the words them selves.”
- Jeff Hulett
“For the selfless, words are tools of inspired unification. For the selfish, words are weapons of biased division.”
- Jeff Hulett
“Tough times create strong men
Strong men create easy times
Easy times create weak men
Weak men create tough times
————
You need to raise warriors.”
- G. Michael Hopf
9. Fear
“Fear does not stop death. lt stops life. And worrying does not take away tomorrow's troubles. It takes away today’s peace ”
- Randy Armstrong
“We grow and thrive when we are brave enough to stand in the center of our own pain and listen to what it is trying to communicate.”
- Jill Bolte Taylor
"The slippery slope argument provokes fear-activated confirmation bias in others."
10. Leadership
“A champion is someone willing to be uncomfortable”
- Pat Summitt, Sum It Up
“They don’t care how much you know, unless they know how much you care”
- Theodore Roosevelt
(and often said by Pat Summitt)
Churchill was fond of quoting a French maxim, "On ne règne sur les àmes que par le calme," meaning, essentially, "One leads by calm.
- Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile
"Risk more than others think is safe.
Care more than others think is wise.
Dream more than others think is practical.
Expect more than others think is possible. "
- Cadet Maxim, USMA, West Point, NY
“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
- Michelangelo
“Of all the manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most."
- Thucidides, Athenian historian (471-400 BC)
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those that mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
- Bernard Baruch
“Confidence is thinking well of your ability. Arrogance is when that confidence causes you to think less of others.”
- Randy Walton
"I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom."
- Anatole France, 1844-1924
"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."
- Luke 12:48
"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. "
- Thomas Jefferson
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
"Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better."
- Pat Reilly
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
And, weak men create hard times.”
- G. Michael Hopf
“The only thing I ever wanted to be
Is the best damn version of me that I could be.”
- Mac Lethal
"The twin killers of success are impatience and greed."
-Jim Rohn
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind." - Dr. Seuss
11. Work & Success
Work is “....engaging in an activity that, when abused, causes the loss of mental clarity, in addition to bad posture and loss of definition in facial features.”
- NN Taleb, Skin In The Game
“His life was a case study in the profitable use of time.”
- Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton
“The leadership of work -
Precise work is when we individually do our jobs well
Accurate work is when we align our individual jobs to the vision
Inspired work is when we take ownership for the success of the vision, not just our job
Success comes when teams do well....good leaders enable great teams!”
-Jeff Hulett
"Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."
- Mark Twain
"Success is a frequency game. We have a certain but unknown probability of success. The idea is to attempt success many times in order to reach the successful outcome."
- Jeff Hulett
Hulett's Law
"The chance of a venture's success can only be as high as the stakeholders with the lowest skin in the game."
"I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."
- Wayne Gretzky
12. Change and Time
“The entire evolution of science would suggest that the best grammar for thinking about the world is that of change, not of permanence. Not of being, but of becoming.”
- Carlo Rovelli, The Order Of Time
“The present is the intermediary between past and future; it contains the active agent that produces the future, and it contains the records of the past, which is completed and
irretrievable.”
- Hans Reichenbach, The Direction Of Time
“Life is this network of processes for increasing entropy - processes that act as catalysts to each other.”
- Carlo Rovelli, The Order Of Time
“Life is humanity’s epic struggle against the inexorable march of entropy.”
- Jeff Hulett
“Like entropy, the karma train is never late”
- author unknown
“I suppose it is human nature to get anchored in our beliefs. The key is knowing when to drop anchor and sail away.”
- Jeff Hulett
13. Business
“If you are not paying for the product, you are the product”
- The Social Dilemma, a documentary film
(though I think this was quoted from others)
“Invention is the mother of necessity”
- Thorstein Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship: And the State of Industrial Arts
and
"Innovation is the mothering of invention"
- Jeff Hulett
"Technology is not the driver of change; what drives technology is human desire"
- Ellen Ullman, Life in Code
{Veblen and Ullman's quotes remind me of the Insatiable Principle, as suggested by David Autor in his article: Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation}
"I see the future as probabilistically available, I see people as being probabilistically challenged, I see the difference as a business opportunity."
- Jeff Hulett
“When companies become ’too big to fail,’ they realize taking outsized risk is the right strategy, as the upside is privatized and the downside socialized”
- Scott Galloway, Post Corona. Referring to Big Tech.
"We are infected by the details of what we know."
- Unknown
14. Political economy
“All people are conservative, we just conserve different things”
- Jeff Hulett
"For Democracy - it is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary."
- F.A. Hayek
"While people may sometimes make dumb decisions, central planners will make far dumber decisions for those people."
- Jeff Hulett
"While the last resort of the competitive economy is the bailiff, the ultimate sanction of a planned economy is the hangman."
- Willhelm Roepke
15. Science
“Some mathematicians are birds, others are frogs. Birds fly high in the air and survey broad vistas of mathematics out to the far horizon. They delight in concepts that unify our thinking and bring together diverse problems from different parts of the landscape. Frogs live in the mud below and see only the flowers that grow nearby. They delight in the details of particular objects, and they solve problems one at a time.”
- Freeman Dyson
"Myopia is central to how we scientists go about finding out about new things--by learning more and more about less and less."
- Robert Sapolsky