The Voluntary Movie Rating System (2004)
Context: We count it crucial to make regular soundings to find out how the public perceives the rating program, and to measure the approval and disapproval of what we are doing... The rating system isn't perfect but, in an imperfect world, it seems each year to match the expectations of those whom it is designed to serve — parents of America.
“I never expect a perfect work from an imperfect man.”
“We are all imperfect. We can not expect perfect government.”
Address at a banquet given by the Board of Trade and Chamber of Commerce of Washington, D.C., May 8, 1909.; found in Presidential Addresses and State Papers of William Howard Taft, vol. 1, chapter 7, p. 82 (1910).
“No one is perfect in this imperfect world.”
Congo, My Country
No. 85
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)
Context: I should esteem it the extreme of imprudence to prolong the precarious state of our national affairs, and to expose the Union to the jeopardy of successive experiments, in the chimerical pursuit of a perfect plan. I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom, of the individuals of whom they are composed.
Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de Port-Royal (1752), as cited by M. A. Screech in Laughter at the Foot of the Cross (1997), p. 69
“To a modern mathematician, design seems to be a second-rate intellectual activity.”
George Forsythe (1966) cited in: Peter Naur (1992) Computing: A human activity. p. 230
On himself and his contemporaries.
Paris Review interview (1958)
Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought Acceptance Speech (2013)
“There is nothing known as "Perfect". Its only those imperfections which we choose not to see!!”
