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False Views

False views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.

– Charles Darwin

Inspiration Is Indefatigable Work

Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration … shining down from heavens as a ray of grace. In reality, the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre or bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects…. All great artists and thinkers are great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Vision

Vision is not an image fully formed. Vision is knowing where to look without necessarily knowing what to look for. Vision is the ability to see the trail of breadcrumbs, and the strength and conviction necessary to follow that trail despite not knowing where it leads.

– Paul Buchheit

Focus and Simplicity

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

– Steve Jobs

Science

There is nothing like “basic science” and “applied science”. There is only science and its application.

– Louis Pasteur

…a fourth rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar.

The New York Herald (May 19 1860) describing Abraham Lincoln