Quote Of The Week

Quote of the Week 5 " Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic universe. In this match, surprises are expected ." ― Amos Tversky Cited in  Michael Lewis' book " The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds "   featuring the joint work and friendship of two  renowned psychologists:  Daniel Kahneman  and  Amos Tversky .  See  http://covestreetcapital.com/amos-tversky-an-amazing-man/  for more Amos Tversky quotes taken from the book .

Quote of the Week 4 " No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story ." ― Daniel Kahneman Cited in  a 2017  Forbes  and a 2016 Vanity Fair article  that promoted  Michael Lewis' book " The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds " featuring the joint work and friendship of two  renowned psychologists: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky .

Quote of the Week 3 " The greatest shortcoming of the human race is man’s inability to understand the exponential function." ― Albert A. Bartlett Source:  Quote Investigator

Quote of the Week 2 " You shall know a word by the company it keeps." ―  John Rupert Firth Cited in countless publications on Natural Language Processing (NLP) including  Christopher Manning's Stanford 2022 " Lecture 1: Introduction and Word Vectors " (slide #18).

Quote of the Week 1 " As you start to walk on the way, the way appears. " ― Dsch alāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (Rumi)

Quote of the Year 2021* " Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. " ―  Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire   [CW 1] Runner-up "Software doesn’t age like fine wine; it ages like milk.   Software goes bad over time." ― Josh Corman [CW 29] * as measured by LinkedIn impressions.

Quote of the Week 52 " It's your road, and yours alone. O thers may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you. " ― Dsch alāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (Rumi)

Quote of the Week 51 " Knowledge is having the right answers. Intelligence is asking the right questions. Wisdom is knowing when to ask the right questions." ―  A @ProfFeynman tweet Source: Tweet

Quote of the Week 50 " All complex systems that work, evolved from simpler systems that worked. " ―  Gall's Law Referenced by Werner Vogels in his recent AWS re:Invent 2021 keynote . Full quote according to Wikipedia : " A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system. "

Quote of the Week 49 " Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born. " ―  Nikola Tesla Cited here in context: " The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born."

Quote of the Week 48 " A real friendship ought to introduce each person to unexpected weirdness in the other. " ―  Jaron Lanier Cited by Lex Fridman in a podcast with  Jaron Lanier: Virtual Reality, Social Media & the Future of Humans and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #218 - YouTube   Another  quote from the VR pioneer on Kara Swisher's Sway podcast about what he thinks of Meta and the Mark Zuckerberg Metaverse demo. It was ... "L ike some megalomaniac took my stuff & filtered it through some weird self-aggrandizement filter. " ―  Jaron Lanier

Quote of the Week 47 " After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell, but you can't buy it back. " ―  Bob Dylan Stated in Dylan's 2004 memoir   Chronicles: Volume One . Triggered by  the use of the quote in Artur Varanda's master thesis The GDPR and Log Pseudonymization . See the paper  Log pseudonymization: Privacy maintenance in practice   for an excerpt of the research results in English.

Quote of the Week 46 " If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there . " ―  Lewis Carroll A paraphrase of an exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in  Lewis Carroll 's  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland . Triggered by  Thomas Stiehm's  use of the quote in his presentation " Continuous Build and other DevOps anti-patterns, and how to overcome them " (slide 4).

Quote of the Week 45 "I’m smart enough to know that I’m dumb. " ―  Richard Feynman In line with Dunning and Kruger's findings the inverse corollary could be stated as: "I’m dumb enough to think that I’m smart. " That triggers a reference to Mount Stupid as depicted in  Zach Weinersmith 's (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)   chart which according to Chris Barth " features a prominent bump, toward the low end of the knowledge spectrum, where people feel qualified to dish on a given subject, despite their relative lack of wisdom. The name of that bump is Mount Stupid." Source:  https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2475 (Zach Weinersmith) Gunter Dueck has pointed out the similarity between this chart and the Gartner Hype Cycle ... but that's a different story .

Quote of the Week 44 "Continuous is more often than you think. " ―  Mike Roberts Triggered by the use of Roberts ' quote by Dave Farley in his presentation of the " Top 10 Rules For Continuous Integration ". Also cited in the last paragraph "Done Means Released" of Warren Veerasingam's blog article " Found: 7 Lost Principles of Continuous Delivery ".

Quote of the Week 43 "Even the future used to be better in the past. " ―  Karl Valentin "Früher war sogar die Zukunft besser. " ―  Karl Valentin As seen on the menu  of Berggasthof Neureuth .

Quote of the Week 42 "Pr ecision is vanity, recall is sanity. " ―  Martin White Title of a recent blog article by Martin White .   For a lot of use cases in information management and search ("finding all the relevant results"), false positives (as a result of lesser precision) are easier to handle than false negatives (as a result of insufficient recall) as one might not even know these misses exist in the information base (" You don't know what you don't know "). For more information on Type I ("false positive") vs. Type II ("false negative") Errors see for example  Wikipedia .

Quote of the Week 41 " Speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts. " ― Charles Maurice de Talleyrand -Périgord Triggered by Harald Schmidt's use of Talleyrand 's quote in a TV discussion earlier this summer.   Most likely a variation of a quote by Voltaire : " Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts. "   " Die Menschen gebrauchen ihren Verstand nur, um ihr Unrecht zu rechtfertigen, und ihre Sprache allein, um ihre Gedanken zu verbergen. "

Quote of the Week 40 " The gurney is the reward. " ― Malapropism I came across this malapropism of the zen proverb and title of the 1987 book " The Journey is the Reward " on Steve Jobs thirty years ago when working for NeXT. The January 1991 issue of MacWorld attributes the origin to Apple employees suggesting alternative company slogans following the company's announcement of the discontinuation of profit sharing.

Quote of the Week 39 " It is by  logic  that we prove , but by  intuition  that we discover.   To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better.“ ― Henri Poincaré Triggered by Jay McClelland ’ s use of the first part of the  quote in a recent podcast with Lex Fridman.

Quote of the Week 38 " When the moon reaches fullness, it begins to wane. " ― Sima Qian Triggered by Kai Strittmatter citing another Sima Qian quote in chapter "Das eiserne Haus" of his book " Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur -  Wie China den digitalen Überwachungsstaat aufbaut und uns damit herausfordert "  in German: "Besser als die Zustimmung der Menge:   die Widerrede eines einzigen mutigen Mannes!" Strittmatter's book for the US market: " We Have Been Harmonized - Life in China's Surveillance State "

Quote of the Week 37 " Man can embody truth but he cannot know it." ―  William Butler Yeats   Triggered by the use of the quote in the documentary " Being in the World - On the Subject of the  #Heideggerian  Dasein " which is referenced in the recent research paper " A brief history of AI: how to prevent another winter (a critical review) ".

Quote of the Week 36 " It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. " ― Danish proverb See Quote Investigator for background information. German translation: "Prognosen sind schwierig, besonders wenn sie die Zukunft betreffen." Background information in German .

Quote of the Week 35 " Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills. " ― Arthur Schopenhauer Triggered by  a podcast interview with  Prof. Dr. Dr. Gerhart Roth where he cited the original quote  in German: " Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will. " Later  translated as: " Man can do what he wants but he cannot want what he wants. "

Quote of the Week 34 " What's not worth doing is not worth doing well. " ―  Abraham Maslow Triggered by Scott Barry Kaufman's tweet in the context of the promotion of his book " Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization " on a podcast with Jordan B. Peterson. Originally stated in Maslow's book " Maslow on Management " (original title: " Eupsychian Management ") and later referenced in the book  " The Maslow Business Reader " (pg. 17). The complementary statement to the strive for effectiveness and efficiency to be productive : " Do the right things and do them right. " Spending time and resources on the wrong thing is just a waste.  See also: Source:  " Avoid Doing the Wrong things Righter… But, “By What Method?” ".