Hand quotes

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American_Mottos

Willing Hearts Skillful Hands

“With willing hearts and skillful hands, the difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a bit longer.”
  • Source: Inscription on the memorial to the Seabees (U.S. Naval Construction Battalions), between Memorial Bridge and Arlington Cemetery, dedicated 1974. Also motto of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, according to The Home Book of American Quotations, ed. Bruce Bohle, p. 35 (1967), which says that other branches of the service also used this slogan. Newsweek, March 8, 1943, p. 34, attributes this “cocky slogan” to the Army Air Forces. A higher comparative, “The impossible we do at once; the miraculous takes a little longer,” was said to be the motto of the Army Service Forces (The New York Times, November 4, 1945, pp. 2E, 6E.) This echoes a remark attributed to Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, Louis XVI’s minister of finance. Marie Antoinette asked him something in a tone that brooked no refusal, adding that perhaps it would be difficult. He replied, “If it is only difficult, it is done; if it is impossible, we shall see.” (J. F. Michaud, Biographie Universelle, vol. 6, p. 427.)

Marcus_Aurelius

Fame

“The most lasting fame will stretch but to a sorry extent; for, alas! poor transitory mortals who hand it down know little even of themselves, much less of those who died long before their time.”

Claude_Bernard

Head and Hand

“An experimenter must be at once theorist and practitioner... We cannot separate these two things: head and hand. An able hand, without a head to direct it, is a blind tool; the head is powerless without its executive hand.”
  • Source: From the book "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine" written by Claude Bernard published in French in 1865 as "Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale". Translated to English by Henry Copley Greene in 1927 and republished by Henry Shuman, Inc. in 1949. Page 3. Available online at https://archive.org/details/b21270557 retrieved 2024.

George_E_P_Box

Slow Progress

“History shows that the human animal has always learned but progress used to be very slow. This was because learning often depended on the chance coming together of a potentially informative event on the one hand and a perceptive observer on the other. Scientific method accelerated that process.”
  • Source: George E.P. Box, in the article ‘Total Quality: Its Origins and its Future’, published 1995 at the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement.

Robert_N_Britcher

Programming_Straining

“If programming symbols were made of steel, we would surely notice men and women straining to hoist thousand-pound beams with a single hand. But alas, their weight is intellectual...”
  • Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 111.

Fred_Brooks

Team Design

“Team design is increasingly the norm for complex artifacts. Teams are often geographically dispersed. Designers are increasingly divorced from both use and implementation — typically they no longer can build with their own hands the things they design. All kinds of designs are now captured in computer models instead of drawings. Formal design processes are increasingly taught, and they are often mandated by employers.”
  • Source: Brooks Jr., F. P. (2010). The Design of Design. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley. ISBN: 978-0-201-36298-5. Preface.

Richard_Clarke_Cabot

Ethics and Science

"Ethics and science need to shake hands."
  • Source: Richard C. Cabot (1933), The meaning of Right and Wrong, Introduction, p. 10. New York, NY: Macmillian.

Keywords: Ethics_quotes Science_quotes Shake_quotes Hand_quotes

Paul_Dirac

Mathematics Will Lead

“If you are receptive and humble mathematics will lead you by the hand. Again and again, when I have been at a loss how to proceed, I have just had to wait until I have felt the mathematics led me by the hand. It has led me along an unexpected path, a path where new vistas open up, a path leading to new territory, where one can set up a base of operations, from which one can survey the surroundings and plan future progress.”

  • Source: Paul Dirac As quoted in “The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom” (2009) by Graham Farmelo, p. 435.

Douglas_Hofstadter

Stepping Back

“What AI sorely lacks is programs which can step back and take a look at what is going on, and with this perspective, reorient themselves to the task at hand.”
  • Source: Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. Written by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Basic Books, New York, NY. ISBN 13: 978-046502656-2. ISBN 10: 046502656-7. Chapter 18. Page 613.

Aldous_Huxley

Time Tyrant

“Time is our tyrant. We are chronically aware of the moving minute hand, even of the moving second hand. We have to be. There are trains to be caught, clocks to be punched, tasks to be done in specified periods, records to be broken by fractions of a second, machines that set the pace and have to be kept up with. Our consciousness of the smallest units of time is now acute. To us, for example, the moment 8.17 a.m. means something — something very important, if it happens to be the starting time of our daily train. To our ancestors, such an odd eccentric instant was without significance — did not even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stevenson were part inventors of time.”
  • Source: Aldous Huxley (1936). An essay entitled Time and the Machine within the book The Olive Tree and Other Essays, published by Harper and Brothers, ASIN: B08VNTBLY4.

Alexander_Kossiakoff et al.

Skeptical Positive Thinking

"The Power of Skeptical Positive Thinking... is meant to capture an important characteristic of successful systems engineering. The skeptical part is important to temper the traditional optimism of the design specialist regarding the probability of success of a chosen design approach. It is the driving force for the insistence of validation of the approach selected at the earliest possible opportunity. The other dimension of skepticism, which is directly related to the characteristic of positive thinking, refers to the reaction in the face of failure or apparent failure of a selected technique or design approach. Many design specialists who encounter an unexpected failure are plunged into despair. The systems engineer, on the other hand, cannot afford the luxury of hand wringing."
  • Source:Kossiakoff, Alexander; Sweet, William N.; Seymour, Samuel J.; Biemer, Steven M.. 'Systems Engineering Principles and Practice'. 2011. Wiley. Kindle Edition. Section 1.6 page 23.

Parmenides

Look Afar

“Look steadfastly with thy mind at things though afar as if they were at hand.”

  • Source: From the poem known as ‘On Nature' by Parmenides, originally written circa 430 BCE. Found in the book ‘Early Greek Philosophy' 3rd edition by John Burnet in section ‘Parmenides: On Nature', published in 1920 by A&C Black, London, England. Retrieved 2024-03-19 from https://platonic-philosophy.org/files/Parmenides%20-%20Poem.pdf

Alan_Perlis

Computing Fun

“I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.”
  • Source: Quoted in The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Hal Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman and Julie Sussman (McGraw-Hill, 2nd edition, 1996).

Bertrand_Russell

Fire Burns

“The first man who said 'fire burns' was employing scientific method, at any rate if he had allowed himself to be burnt several times. This man had already passed through the two stages of observation and generalization. He had not, however, what scientific technique demands — a careful choice of significant facts on the one hand, and, on the other hand, various means of arriving at laws otherwise than by mere generalization.”
  • Source: Bertrand Russell, (1931), In The Scientific Outlook (1931, 2009), 3.

Herbert_Simon

Invisible Hand

“In examining the processes of social coordination, economics has given top billing sometimes almost exclusive billing to the market mechanism. It is indeed a remarkable mechanism... The optimality theorems stretch credibility, so far as real-world markets are concerned, because they require substantive rationality of the kinds we found implausible in our examination of the theory of the firm. Markets populated by consumers and producers who satisfice instead of optimizing do not meet the conditions on which the theorems rest.”

How Things Ought to Be

“The natural sciences are concerned with how things are... Design, on the other hand, is concerned with how things ought to be.”

Adam_Smith

Invisible Hand

“By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”
  • Source: Adam Smith (1776) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London, England: ‎W. Strahan and T. Cadell. Book IV chapter II.

Albert_Speer

Devil Recognition

“One seldom recognizes the devil when he is putting his hand on your shoulder.”
  • Source: Albert Speer. Quoted the article "The Devil's Architect" by James P. O'Donnell, New York Times, 1969-10-26.

Baruch_Spinoza

Hatred and Love

“Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.”

Max_Tegmark

Mathematical Computer Game

“The closer I look at things that seemed non-mathematical, like my arm and my hand, the more mathematical it turns out to be. Could it be that our world also then is really just as mathematical as the computer game reality?”
  • Source: Youtube The Great Math Mystery - Documentary posted by Aerospace Engineering 2017-03-03.

Gerald_Weinberg

Amateur and Professional Programmers

“The amateur... is looking for a way to get the job done. If he runs into difficulty, all he wants is to surmount it — the manner of doing so is of little consequence. Not so, however, for the professional. She may well be aware of numerous ways of circumnavigating the problem at hand. She may even employ one of them for the immediate purpose of getting the job done. But her work does not stop there; it begins there. It begins because she must understand why she did not understand, in order that she may prepare herself for the programs she may someday write which will require that understanding. The amateur, then, is learning about his problem... The professional, conversely, is learning about her profession — programming — and the problem being programmed is only one incidental step in her process of development.”
  • Source: Chapter 7. Weinberg, G. M. (2011). The Psychology of Computer Programming (Silver anniversary edition) | 1971. Weinberg & Weinberg.