Wish quotes
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Contents
Edsger_Wybe_Dijkstra
Lines of Code
“My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as 'lines produced' but as 'lines spent': the current conventional wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger.”
- Source: Dijkstra (1988) On the cruelty of really teaching computing science (EWD1036). Retrieved 2022 from http://www.cs.utexas.edu
/users /EWD /transcriptions /EWD10xx /EWD1036.html
Michael_Faraday
Assertion Duties
“A man who makes assertions, or draws conclusions, regarding any given case, ought to be competent to investigate it. He has no right to throw the onus on others, declaring it their duly to prove him right or wrong. His duty is to demonstrate the truth of that which he asserts, or to cease from asserting. The men he calls upon to consider and judge have enough to do with themselves, in the examination, correction, or verification of their own views. The world little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examination; that in the most successful instances not a tenth of the suggestions, the hopes, the wishes, the preliminary conclusions have been realized.”
- Source: Lecturer=Michael Faraday; Lecture/Title=“Observations on Mental Education: A Lecture Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain Before H.R.H. Prince Albert”; Date=1854-05-06; Book/Title=“Lectures on Education”; Publication/Date=1855; Book/Title=“Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics”; Publication/Date=1859); Page=486.
- Keywords: Assertion_quotes Conclusion_quotes Investigation_quotes Rights_quotes Duty_quotes Proof_quotes Truth_quotes Examination_quotes Correction_quotes Verification_quotes Opinion_quotes World_quotes Thinking_quotes Theory_quotes Mind_quotes Science_quotes Self-Examination_quotes Criticism_quotes Success_quotes Suggestion_quotes Hope_quotes Wish_quotes Man_quotes Case_quotes Competent_quotes Throw_quotes Onus_quotes Right_quotes Wrong_quotes Demonstrate_quotes Men_quotes Consider_quotes Judge_quotes View_quotes Crush_quotes Silent_quotes Secret_quotes Preliminary_quotes Realize_quotes
Self-Correction
“Among those points of self-education which take up the form of mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires. It is impossible for any one who has not been constrained, by the course of his occupation and thoughts, to a habit of continual self-correction, to be aware of the amount of error in relation to judgment arising from this tendency. The force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.”
- Source: Michael Faraday. Royal Institution Lecture On Mental Education (6 May 1854), as reprinted in Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, by Michael Faraday, 1859, pp 474-475.
- Keywords: Self-Education_quotes Autodidact_quotes Mental_quotes Discipline_quotes Importance_quotes Conflict_quotes Vanity_quotes Tendency_quotes Self-Deception_quotes Wish_quotes Resistance_quotes Desire_quotes Impossibility_quotes Constraint_quotes Occupation_quotes Thinking_quotes Habit_quotes Self-Correction_quotes Error_quotes Judgment_quotes Temptation_quotes Urge_quotes Evidence_quotes Disregard_quotes Opposition_quotes Wonder_quotes Promotion_quotes Practice_quotes Self-Abnegation_quotes Tribalism_quotes Common_Sense_quotes
Heraclitus
Wish
“For men to have whatever they wish, would not be well. Sickness makes health pleasant and good; hunger, satiety; weariness, rest.”
- Source: Heraclitus from the book “The Fragments of the work of Heraclitus of Ephesus on Nature” translated by G. T. W. Patrick, published in 1889 by N. Murray of Baltimore, Maryland. Fragment CIV. Page 109. Fragment originally written by Heraclitus circa 475 BCE.
- See Also:
- Keywords: Wish_quotes Whatever_quotes Well_quotes Sick_quotes Health_quotes Hunger_quotes Satiety_quotes Weary_quotes Rest_quotes
Aldous_Huxley
Protect Our Minds
“We protect our minds by an elaborate system of abstractions, ambiguities, metaphors and similes from the reality we do not wish to know too clearly; we lie to ourselves, in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes.”
- Source: Aldous Huxley (1936). An essay entitled Words and Behavior within the book The Olive Tree and Other Essays, published by Harper and Brothers, ASIN: B08VNTBLY4.
- Keywords: Protection_quotes Mind_quotes Elaborate_quotes System_quotes Abstraction_quotes Ambiguity_quotes Metaphor_quotes Simile_quotes Reality_quotes Wish_quotes Clear_quotes Lie_quotes Excuse_quotes Ignorance_quotes Alibi_quotes Stupidity_quotes Comprehension_quotes Possess_quotes Continue_quotes Conscience_quotes Commitment_quotes Tolerance_quotes Monster_quotes Crime_quotes
Brooks_Jackson and Kathleen_Hall_Jamieson
Fact Driven
“Humans are not by nature the fact-driven, rational beings we like to think we are. We get the facts wrong more often than we think we do. And we do so in predictable ways: we engage in wishful thinking. We embrace information that supports our beliefs and reject evidence that challenges them. Our minds tend to take shortcuts, which require some effort to avoid ... [and] more often than most of us would imagine, the human mind operates in ways that defy logic.”
- Source: Brooks Jackson, As co-author with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, in unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation (2007), 69.
- Keywords: Humanity_quotes Nature_quotes Fact_quotes Reason_quotes Wrong_quotes Bias_quotes Prediction_quotes Thinking_quotes Wish_quotes Information_quotes Belief_quotes Rejection_quotes Evidence_quotes Challenge_quotes Mind_quotes Shortcut_quotes Effort_quotes Avoidance_quotes Imagination_quotes Logic_quotes Support_quotes
Friedrich_Nietzsche
Believe or Inquire
“Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”
- Source: Friedrich Nietzsche in a letter to his sister Elizabeth 1865-06-11.
Alan_Perlis
Programming Language Wish
“When someone says ‘I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done,’ give him a lollipop.”
- Source: Perlis, A. J. (1982). Special Feature: Epigrams on programming. ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 17(9), 7–13. http://doi.org/10.1145/947955.1083808
- Keywords: Programming_quotes Language_quotes Voice_Command_quotes Wish_quotes Do_quotes Lollipop_quotes Say_quotes
Baruch_Spinoza
Free Will and Hidden Causes
“Herefrom it follows, first, that men think themselves free inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed them so to wish and desire. Secondly, that men do all things for an end, namely, for that which is useful to them, and which they seek.”
- Source: A book. Entitled Ethics. Also entitled Ethica. Written by Baruch Spinoza. Originally published 1677. Online at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ethics_(Spinoza). Translated from Latin by R. H. M. Elwes. Part I, Appendix.
Free Will Not Absolute
“In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.”
- Source: A book. Entitled Ethics. Written by Baruch Spinoza. Originally published 1677. Online at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ethics_(Spinoza). Translated from Latin by R. H. M. Elwes. Part II, Prop. XLVIII note.
- Keywords: Free_Will_quotes Mind_quotes Causality_quotes Absolute_quotes Determine_quotes Wish_quotes Another_quotes Last_quotes Infinity_quotes
Alan_Turing
Consciousness
“I do not wish to give the impression that I think there is no mystery about consciousness. There is, for instance, something of a paradox connected with any attempt to localize it.”
- Source: From the paper entitled “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” by Alan Turing. Published in 1950 in “Mind”, volume 49, number 236.
