A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.

Alexander Pope

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

Plutarch

Sow an act…reap a habit;
Sow a habit…reap a character;
Sow a character…reap a destiny.

George Dana Boardman, the Younger

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Hanlon’s Razor - Robert J. Hanlon (among others)

90% of everything is Crap.

Sturgeon’s Law - Theodore Sturgeon

90% of the remainder isn’t too hot either.

Westrup’s Corollary - Stirling Westrup

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.

I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities.

• Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments.
• Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy.
• The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations.
• But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!

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, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world.
The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress in the world depends on the unreasonable man