“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.”
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Dave Barry 121
American writer 1947Related quotes
“I don't measure America by its achievement but by its potential.”
Source: Unbought and Unbossed (1970), p. 175.
“How do you achieve success? By two words: Correct decisions”
How do you make correct decisions? By one word: Experience
How do you gain experience? By two words: Wrong decisions"
May 2009.
Moonlighting on Yale Field, Riders on Earth (1978)
Review of “Eyes of Amber”, by Joan D. Vinge (as anthologized in New Women of Wonder, edited by Pamela Sargent http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/yet-more-sf-about-women-by-women, 2015
2010s
Context: There’s a rule I used to call The Niven Rule but which I just now have decided to call the Rusting Bridges rule. It came to me after reading Niven’s “All The Bridges Rusting.” In this story, humans have by the early 21st century explored the Solar System and sent not just one but two crewed ships to Alpha Centauri … despite which the characters moan endlessly about the dire state of the space program. “Eyes of Amber” would be another example of the Rusting Bridges [Rule]: No matter how much the space program you actually have has achieved, whether it’s first contact with aliens or trips to nearby stars, it can never have achieved as much as the space programs you can imagine would have achieved in its place, given that imaginary programs aren’t limited by issues of politics, funding, or engineering.
The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000 (1988)