Some Words of Wisdom

(Image Credit: Hetemeel.com)

The New Year is a good time for reflection, so let's start off with some words of wisdom. Here is my collection of quotable quotes. Some are deep -- Others not so much...



"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons."
- Popular Mechanics, March 1949


"I do not think that the radio waves I have discovered will have any practical application."
- Heinrich Hertz, 1890


"After all is said and done, more is said than done."
- Aesop


"Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity."
- Anonymous


"Measure twice, cut once."
- Excellent advice from my father, Joseph Pirro, a master cabinetmaker


"Learn from the mistakes of others -- You can't live long enough to make them all yourself."
- Eleanor Roosevelt


"Talent hits a target no one else can hit... Genius hits a target no one else can see."
- Arthur Schopenhauer


"Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings."
- Salvador Dali


"When you mix enthusiasm and ambition with incompetence, you get some pretty interesting results."
- Guy Pirro


"Science is built up of facts as a house is with stones... But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house."
- Henri Poincare


"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."
- Stephen Hawking


"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein


"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."
- Leonardo da Vinci


"Pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended on you."
- St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits (aka "God's Marines")


"People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do."
- Lewis Cass


"The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away."
- Pablo Picasso


"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work."
- Aristotle

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
- George Santayana


"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."
- Benjamin Franklin


"The great tragedy of Science -- The slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."
- Thomas Henry Huxley


"To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge."
- Benjamin Disraeli


"No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows."
- J. Robert Oppenheimer


"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
- Socrates


"Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."
- Friedrich Nietzsche


"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak... Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
- Winston Churchill


"To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail."
- Abraham H. Maslow


"Nature is the art of God."
- Dante Alighieri


"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
- Thomas A. Edison


"Philosophy is common sense with big words."
- James Madison


"The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion."
- Arnold H. Glasow


"Too often, we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
- John F. Kennedy


"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubts."
- Abraham Lincoln


"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
- Wernher von Braun


"Don't talk unless you can improve the silence."
- Jorge Luis Borges


"Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance."
- Hippocrates


"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


"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."
- Isaac Newton


"Originality is nothing but judicious imitation."
- Francois-Marie Arouet (aka Voltaire)


"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


"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
- Winston Churchill


"Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants."
- Louis D. Brandeis


"There are no facts, only interpretations."
- Friedrich Nietzsche


"Statistics are no substitute for judgment."
- Henry Clay


"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."
- Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain)


"Study the small print and learn by understanding... Ignore the small print and learn by experience."
- Guy Pirro


"Experience is the hardest kind of teacher -- It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward."
- Oscar Wilde


"Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes


"Enjoy the little things in life because one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things."
- Kurt Vonnegut


"The roots of education are bitter... But the fruit is sweet."
- Aristotle


"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm."
- Publilius Syrus


"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
- Harry S. Truman


"Any jackass can kick down a barn... But it takes a good carpenter to build one."
- Sam Rayburn


"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal... Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."
- Thomas Jefferson


"A problem well stated is a problem half solved."
- Charles Kettering


"A very little key will open a very heavy door."
- Charles Dickens


"Great acts are made up of small deeds."
- Lao Tzu


"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
- Henry David Thoreau


"There are things known and there are things unknown... And in between are the doors of perception."
- Aldous Huxley. Also basis for the name of the rock group "The Doors"


"Everything is theoretically impossible -- Until it is done."
- Robert A. Heinlein


"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
- Ernest Rutherford


"The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man."
- Richard P. Feynman


"The more closely you look at one thing, the less closely can you see something else."
- Werner Heisenberg


"Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists."
- David Hilbert, Mathematician


"Physicists are like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules -- Mathematicians are more like classical composers."
- Brian Greene


"The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in."
- Nassim Taleb


"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future."
- Niels Bohr


"Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today."
- John C. Maxwell


"The worst enemy of life, freedom, and the common decencies is total anarchy... The second worst enemy is total efficiency."
- Aldous Huxley


"Making good judgments when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge is not leadership -- It's bookkeeping."
- Dee Hock


"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for."
- Socrates


"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Winston Churchill


"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered -- The point is to discover them."
- Galileo Galilei


"Real difficulties can be overcome... It is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable."
- Theodore Vail


"If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders."
- Pauline Phillips (aka Abigail Van Buren -- Dear Abby)


"True education is to learn how to think, not what to think."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti


"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."
- Confucius


"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
- Lao-tzu


"When you have completed ninety-five percent of your journey you are halfway there."
- Japanese Proverb


"A diplomat must always think twice before he says nothing."
- Irish Proverb


"If you can walk, you can dance... If you can talk, you can sing."
- African Proverb


"A half-truth is a whole lie."
- Jewish Proverb


"By learning you will teach -- By teaching you will learn."
- Italian Proverb


"If the camel once get his nose in a tent, the body will soon follow."
- Arabian Proverb


"Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed by a lie."
- Russian Proverb


"Words must be weighed, not counted."
- Polish Proverb


"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
- Chinese Proverb


"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit."
- Greek Proverb


"When the blind man carries the lame man, both go forward."
- Swedish Proverb


"He who laughs last, thinks slowest."
- Anonymous


"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."
- Anonymous


"An optimist builds castles in the sky. A dreamer lives there. A realist collects rent from both of them."
- Anonymous


"A camel is a horse designed by committee."
- Anonymous


Six Phases of a Project - Anonymous
1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic and hysteria
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Praise and honor for the non-participants


I think I'll change my password to "incorrect" so whenever I forget it, the computer will say to me "Your password is incorrect."

Source: Guy Pirro