“Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.”
Tamora Pierce book Bloodhound
Source: Bloodhound
“Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.”
Tamora Pierce book Bloodhound
Source: Bloodhound
James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger
Source: How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, Plume, New York (2009), p. 12.
Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter
Source: Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.”
Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist
“Truth might be stranger than fiction, but it needs a better editor.”
David Benioff book City of Thieves
Source: City of Thieves
“Men have social needs. They have a need for other people; they have a need to love and be loved.”
Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian
Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another. What I then propose to do is, briefly stated, to test saintliness by common sense, to use human standards to help us decide how far the religious life commends itself as an ideal kind of human activity. … It is but the elimination of the humanly unfit, and the survival of the humanly fittest, applied to religious beliefs; and if we look at history candidly and without prejudice, we have to admit that no religion has ever in the long run established or proved itself in any other way. Religions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.
James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.
Succeeding in Science: Some Rules of Thumb (1993)
Context: To have success in science, you need some luck.
But to succeed in science, you need a lot more than luck. And it's not enough to be smart — lots of people are very bright and get nowhere in life. In my view, you have to combine intelligence with a willingness not to follow conventions when they block your path forward.