We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Albert Einstein
Tag: quote
Flaubert quote
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert
Diogenes quote
Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?
Diogenes of Sinope
Karl Popper
When I was fresh out of university, I worked as a typesetter and proofreader. I was not very good at it because I could not quite stop myself from reading the books, when I should have been meticulously checking them for errors.
One book that was particularly distracting was ‘All life is problem solving’, by Karl Popper. The full stops, paragraph breaks and em-rules cascaded past my attention like animals escaping a zoo as I turned the pages, transfixed. I recently found some post it notes upon which I had scrawled this particularly inspiring passage from the book:
“I am anything but an enemy of religion. My religion is the doctrine of the splendours of the world; of the freedom and creativity of wonderful human beings; of the terror and suffering of the despairing people we can help; of the extent of good and evil that has emerged in human history and keeps emerging over and over again; of the joyful message that we can prolong people’s lives, especially those of women and children who have had the toughest life. I know nothing else. And although the scientific quest for truth is part of my religion, the magnificent scientific hypotheses are not religion – that must never be”
Spinach quote
‘I do not like spinach, and I am glad I don’t – because if I liked it, I would eat it, and I can’t stand it’ – From Flaubert’s Dictionary of received ideas
Niels Bohr quote
We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
Niels Bohr
