Cure quotes

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Dwight_D_Eisenhower

Crises and Balance

“Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel. But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.”
  • Source: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell address (17 January 1961).

Alan_Perlis

Useful Software Systems

“We recognize that a practical problem of considerable difficulty and importance has arisen: The successful design, production and maintenance of useful software systems. The importance is obvious and the more so since we see only greater growth in demands and requirements in the future. The consequences of poor performance, poor design, instability and mismatching of promise and performance are not going to be limited to the computing fraternity, or even their nearest neighbors, but will affect considerable sections of our society whose ability to forgive is inversely proportional to their ignorance of the difficulties we face. The source of difficulty is distributed through the whole problem, easy to identify, and yet its cure is hard to pinpoint so that systematic improvement can be gotten.”

Michael_Polanyi

Scientific Method Elucidation

“Almost every major systematic error which has deluded men for thousands of years relied on practical experience. Horoscopes, incantations, oracles, magic, witchcraft, the cures of witch doctors and of medical practitioners before the advent of modern medicine, were all firmly established through the centuries in the eyes of the public by their supposed practical successes. The scientific method was devised precisely for the purpose of elucidating the nature of things under more carefully controlled conditions and by more rigorous criteria than are present in the situations created by practical problems.”
  • Source: Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (1958), 183.

Israel_Zangwill

Democracy

“I recognize that Democracy is the least bad form of government. It is, of course, peculiarly liable to be exploited by demagogues, who, instead of uplifting the masses, use them as a means for lifting themselves up. But whereas there is no way of correcting a maleficent autocracy save by smashing it, a maleficent Democracy contains the cure for its own evils. For the people has a sound instinct in the long run.”
  • Source: Israel Zangwill. A speech. Address delivered before The American Jewish Congress, Carnegie Hall, New York City, October 14, 1923-10-14. Transcript published by The American Jewish Congress, New York. Entitled “Watchman, What of the Night?”.