The Collection
Quotes
21 lines copied out and kept — from books, thinkers, and proverbs.
We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
Attributed to various sources, including the Talmud
The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.
Benjamin Franklin
The principal thing you can learn from a professor is how to be a professor.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question.
Jonas Salk
When I look back at the past and think how much time was spent in vain, how much of it was lost in delusions, in errors, in idleness, in the inability to live; how I failed to value it, how many times I sinned against my heart and spirit — then my heart contracts in pain. Life is a gift, life is happiness, each moment could have been an eternity of happiness. Si jeunesse savait! [If youth knew!]
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
Ursula K. Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
F. A. Hayek
The one dog who barks at nothing answered by a thousand dogs barking at something.
Proverb
Good, Fast, Cheap — pick two.
Project management adage
I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
Alfred North Whitehead
You know the joke — what's the plural of "developer"? A "merge conflict."
Maxine
The Unicorn Project
Wer einmal gelernt hat, dort zu zweifeln und zu fragen, wo die Normen es verbieten, kann grundsätzlich nie wieder aufhören.
Franz Oppenheimer
System der Soziologie, Bd. 1, S. 539
DE
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Francis Bacon
Allen Fortschritt verdanken wir den Unzufriedenen. Zufriedene lieben keine Veränderung.
Salvatore Quasimodo
DE
TANSTAAFL — There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Popularized by Robert A. Heinlein
An economic principle: every choice carries an opportunity cost, even when something appears free.
Es ist ein gewöhnlicher Irrtum in der Politik, Mittel und Zweck zu verwechseln.
Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay
Kritische und historische Essays, 1846
DE
Wir sollten nicht erstaunt sein, wenn nach dem schottischen Sprichwort — "Ein satter und ein hungriger Mann können schlecht miteinander sprechen" — die Logik des reichen Mannes, der die Rechte des Eigentums verteidigt, dem armen Manne, der seine Kinder nach Brot schreien hört, durchaus nicht bündig erscheint.
Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay
DE
Einer Gesetzgebung ist es wohl möglich, den Reichen arm zu machen, aber es ist ihr vollständig unmöglich, den Armen reich zu machen.
Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay
DE
Ich wäre lieber ein armer Mann in einer Dachkammer voller Bücher als ein König, der nicht lesen mag.
Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay
DE
The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.
William Gibson
In the same sense — the past is still here.