“The past is… much more uncertain—or even falsely reported—than is usually recognized.”
Preface
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)
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Richard Hamming90
American mathematician and information theorist 1915–1998Related quotes
“True, it returns ' ' for false, but ' ' is an even more interesting number than 0.”
Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl
[199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997
“Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.”
Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending
Source: The Sense of an Ending
“Poetry had a much more serious beginning than is usually imagin'd, and”
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment
The History of Oracles, and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests (1688)
Context: But why then did the Ancient Priestesses always answer in Verse?... To this Plutarch replies... That even the Ancient Priestesses did now and then speak in Prose. And besides this, in Old times all People were born Poets.... [T]hey had no sooner drank a little freely, but they made Verses; they had no sooner cast their eyes on a Handsom Woman, but they were all Poesy, and their very common discourse fell naturally into Feet and Rhime: So that their Feasts and their Courtships were the most delectable things in the World. But now this Poetick Genius has deserted Mankind: and tho' our passions be as ardent... yet Love at present creeps in humble prose.... Plutarch gives us another reason... that the Ancients wrote always in Verse, whether they treated of Religion, Morality, Natural Philosophy or Astrology. Orpheus and Hesiod, whom every body acknowledges for Poets, were Philosophers also: and Parmenides, Xenophanes, Empedocles, Eudoxus, and Thales... [the] Philosophers, were Poets too. It is very strange indeed that Poetry should be elder Brother to Prose... but it is very probable... precepts... were shap'd into measured lines, that they might be the more easily remembred: and therefore all their Laws and their rules of Morality were in Verse. By this we may see that Poetry had a much more serious beginning than is usually imagin'd, and that the Muses have of late days mightily deviated from their original Gravity.<!--pp. 207-209
Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now
“You are capable of so much more than we usually dare to imagine”
Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer
“I'm always right. This time I'm just even more right than usual.”
Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker
Message to linux-kernel mailing list, 2005-07-14, Torvalds, Linus, 2006-08-28 http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org/msg83284.html, <br class="br">2000s, 2005
Ilana Mercer South African writer
"President Pinicchio’s Growing Proboscis" http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/president-pinocchios-growing-proboscis WorldNetDaily.com, October 31, 2013. <br class="br">2010s, 2013
Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul
The Philistine magazine, August 1901 http://books.google.com/books?id=xxI8AQAAMAAJ&q=%22There+is+something+that+is+much+more+scarce+something+finer+far+something+rarer+than+ability+It+is+the+ability+to+recognize+ability+The+sternest+comment+that+can+be+made+against+employers+as+a+class+lies+in+the+fact+that+men+of+Ability+usually+succeed+in+showing+their+worth+in+spite+of+their+employer+and+not+with+his+assistance+and+encouragement%22&pg=PA87#v=onepage <br class="br">"The Crying Need", in A Message to Garcia, and Thirteen Other Things (1901), p. 163 http://books.google.com/books?id=iSo3AAAAIAAJ&q=%22There+is+something+that+is+much+more+scarce+something+finer+far+something+rarer+than+ability+It+is+the+ability+to+recognize+ability+The+sternest+comment+that+can+be+made+against+employers+as+a+class+lies+in+the+fact+that+men+of+Ability+usually+succeed+in+showing+their+worth+in+spite+of+their+employer+and+not+with+his+assistance+and+encouragement%22&pg=PA163#v=onepage