Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist
Source: "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", 1951, p. 18
Source: "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", 1951, p. 6
Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist
Source: "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", 1951, p. 18
Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game
The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Context: It is a pity that you students aren't fully aware of the luxury and abundance in which you live. But I was exactly the same when I was still a student. We study and work, don't waste much time, and think we may rightly call ourselves industrious — but we are scarcely conscious of all we could do, all that we might make of our freedom. Then we suddenly receive a call from the hierarchy, we are needed, are given a teaching assignment, a mission, a post, and from then on move up to a higher one, and unexpectedly find ourselves caught in a network of duties that tightens the more we try to move inside it. All the tasks are in themselves small, but each one has to be carried out at its proper hour, and the day has far more tasks than hours. That is well; one would not want it to be different. But if we ever think, between classroom, archives, secretariat, consulting room, meetings, and official journeys — if we ever think of the freedom we possessed and have lost, the freedom for self-chosen tasks, for unlimited, far-flung studies, we may well feel the greatest yearning for those days, and imagine that if we ever had such freedom again we would fully enjoy its pleasures and potentialities.
Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist
Source: "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", 1951, p. 7
Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist
Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 8
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Commonly attributed to Twain in computer contexts and post-2000 inspirational books — the first sentence has also been attributed to Agatha Christie and Sally Berger.
Misattributed
“I have never been one to flinch or crawfish when faced with an unpleasant task.”
Charles Portis book True Grit
Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 2, p. 20 : thoughts of 'Mattie Ross'
“The task facing ARAs is daunting: we must empty the cages, not make them larger.”
Tom Regan book Empty Cages
Source: Empty Cages (2004), Ch. 4
“A good, square, stone house, placed on an eminence, facing the Bishop's Palace at Auckland.”
Henry George Liddell (1811–1898) Headmaster, lexicographer, classical scholar, and dean
Of the house where he was born, p. 25.
Colin Gordon, Beyond the Looking Glass (1982)