Echoes

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people... Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

In the great chain of causes and effects, no single fact can be considered in isolation.

The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.

A person who is said to be proficient at the arts is like a fool. Because of his foolishness in concerning himself with just one thing, he thinks of nothing else and thus becomes proficient.

Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.

I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.

He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.

Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.

Man knows much more than he understands.

In every systematic inquiry where there are first principles, or causes, or elements, knowledge and science result from acquiring knowledge of these.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

The cure of many diseases is unknown to physicians of Hellas, because they are ignorant of the whole, which ought to be studied also; for the part can never be well unless the whole is well.

Learning never exhausts the mind.

A part of good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said.

Everything is interaction and reciprocal.

You've got to have models in your head. And you've got to array your experience — both vicarious and direct — on this latticework of models.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.