“God made Homo sapiens a problem-solving creature. The trouble is that He gave us too many resources: too many languages, too many phases of life, too many levels of complexity, too many ways to solve problems, too many contexts in which to solve them, and too many values to balance.
First came the law, accounting, and history which looks backward in time for their values and decision-making criteria, but their paradigm (casuistry) cannot look forward to predict future consequences. Casuistry is overly rigid and does not account for statistical phenomena. To look forward man used two thousand years to evolve scientific method - which can predict the future when it discovers the laws of nature. In parallel, man evolved engineering, and later, systems engineering, which also anticipates future conditions. It took man to the moon, but it often did, and does, a poor job of understanding social systems, and also often ignores the secondary effects of its artifacts on the environment.
Environmental impact analysis was promoted by governments to patch over the weakness of engineering - with modest success - and it does not ignore history; but by not integrating with system design, it is also an incomplete philosophy. System design and architecture, or simply design, like science and engineering is forward-looking, and provides man with comforts and conveniences - if someone will tell them what problems to solve, and which requirements to meet. It rarely collects wisdom from the backward-looking methodologies, often overlooks ordinary operating problems in designing its artifacts, whether autos or buildings, and often ignores the principles of good teamwork.”

International Football Hall of Fame http://www.ifhof.com/hof/cruyff.asp.

Source: Time Enough for Love

Rebecca Lynne Tan, "Swan song for Syesha", The Straits Times (Singapore), May 17, 2008.
On how she knew she was heading home from American Idol season 7

Source: Elegies, Lines 421-423, as translated by Dorothea Wender.

Coming Out Speech (2014)
Context: There are too many kids out there suffering from bullying, rejection, or simply being mistreated because of who they are. Too many dropouts. Too much abuse. Too many homeless. Too many suicides. You can change that and you are changing it. But you never needed me to tell you that. That’s why this was a little bit weird. The only thing I can really say is what I’ve been building up to for the past five minutes. Thank you. Thank for inspiring me. Thank you for giving me hope, and please keep changing the world for people like me. Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you.

Who Put Jesus on the Cross, p. 170

Americans plunder planet? http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=TjAcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KHoEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6924,333924&hl=en, Associated Press, April 6, 1990.

Variant: There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I haven't kept long enough