Quotes I like

If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

T.S. Eliot

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

Richard P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.

Richard P. Feynman, Feynman Lectures on Gravitation

Today, we mostly face the choice between those who write clearly about a subject they don’t understand and those who write poorly about a subject they don’t understand.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that we can make in a very narrow field.

Niels Bohr

You exist in full if and only if your conversation (or writings) cannot be easily reconstructed with clips from other conversations.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country

We are better at (involuntarily) doing out of the box than (voluntarily) thinking out of the box.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

To achieve great things you need a plan and not quite enough time.

Leonard Bernstein

Part of what academics do is generate ideas and teach. The other, perhaps more important part is to play the role of “the Bu*l*hit Police”.