The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Context: Of the fifty or hundred systems of philosophy that have been advanced at different times of the world's history, perhaps the larger number have been, not so much results of historical evolution, as happy thoughts which have accidently occurred to their authors. An idea which has been found interesting and fruitful has been adopted, developed, and forced to yield explanations of all sorts of phenomena. … The remaining systems of philosophy have been of the nature of reforms, sometimes amounting to radical revolutions, suggested by certain difficulties which have been found to beset systems previouslv in vogue; and such ought certainly to be in large part the motive of any new theory. … When a man is about to build a house, what a power of thinking he has to do, before he can safely break ground! With what pains he has to excogitate the precise wants that are to be supplied. What a study to ascertain the most available and suitable materials, to determine the mode of construction to which those materials are best adapted, and to answer a hundred such questions! Now without riding the metaphor too far, I think we may safely say that the studies preliminary to the construction of a great theory should be at least as deliberate and thorough as those that are preliminary to the building of a dwelling-house.
“When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do.”
“A man should build a house with his own hands before he calls himself an engineer.”
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 106.
“A fool boasts about what little he knows. A wise man keeps quiet about what he knows and is safe.”
Flowers of Wisdom
Political Order in Changing Societies https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/gov2126/files/huntington_political_order_changing_soc.pdf (1968), p. 7
Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from A Separate Reality (Chapter 6)
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness
Works and Days
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870)
