A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki
Context: I'm not a fan of classification. It's very difficult to come up with a classification scheme that's useful when what you're most interested in is things that don't fit in, things that you didn't expect. But some people decided that every page should carry classification. They came up with a scheme, based on page names, to establish a classification structure for a wiki. And these people who care about classification maintain it.
“Hence the most scientific classification is a rough-and-ready business at the best.”
Mysticism. A Study of the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness (1911)
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Evelyn Underhill 28
British saint, poet, novelist 1875–1941Related quotes
This has commonly been attributed to Orwell but has not been found in any of his writings. Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/07/rough-men/ found the earliest known appearance in a 1993 Washington Times essay by Richard Grenier: "As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." The absence of quotation marks indicates Grenier was using his own words to convey Orwell's opinion; thus it may have originated as a paraphrase of his statement in "Notes on Nationalism" https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwelnat.htm (May 1945): "Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf." There are also similar sentiments expressed in an essay which Orwell wrote on Rudyard Kipling, quoting from one of Kipling's poems: "Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep." In the same essay Orwell also wrote of Kipling: "He sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them."
Misattributed
“The problem of transmitting scientific knowledge is a very difficult business.”
Interview with the 1988 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Jack Steinberger, at the 58th Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany, July 2008.
Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 3.
“As I visualize it, the business of the future will be a scientific, social and economic unit.”
Congressional testimony (1945)
Context: As I visualize it, the business of the future will be a scientific, social and economic unit. It will be vigorously creative in pure science where its contributions will compare with those of the universities... the machinist will be proud of and informed about the company's scientific advances; the scientist will enjoy the reduction to practice of his basic perceptions. … year by year our national scene would change in the way, I think, all Americans dream of. Each individual will be a member of a group small enough so that he feels a full participant in the purpose and activity of the group. His voice will be heard and his individuality recognized.
Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 3.
Mayr (1981) as cited in: C. Gnoli (2011) "Ontological foundations in knowledge organization: the theory of integrative levels applied in citation order". Scire actas. 17-1
Why Does Software Cost So Much?: And Other Puzzles of the Information Age, (1995), p. 218.
Source: The Doctrine of the Mean