Dan Polansky

Dan Polansky is described at Meta:User:Dan Polansky.

Formatting: Format quotes using bullet lists as per Wikiquote:Guide to layout:

* Quotation
** Author, ''Work'' (Year)

Quotations

Some quotations of personal interest follow, using a custom format. I do not necessarily agree with them; they have to be interesting or inspiring enough to be included.

• Marcus Aurelius

  From my tutor: not to become a partisan of the Green jacket or the Blue in the races, nor of Thracian or Samnite gladiators; to bear pain and be content with little; to work with my own hands, to mind my own business, and to be slow to listen to slander.

• Pirsig 1974

  There's no fault isolation problem in motorcycle maintenance that can stand up to it [the scientific method]. When you've hit a really tough one, tried everything, racked your brain and nothing works, and you know that this time Nature has really decided to be difficult, you say, "Okay, Nature, that's the end of the nice guy," and you crank up the formal scientific method.

• Pirsig 1974

  The question why comes back again and again and has become a major reason for wanting to deliver this Chautauqua. Why did they [the motorcycle mechanics] butcher it so? These were not people running away from technology, like John and Sylvia. These were the technologists themselves. They sat down to do a job and they performed it like chimpanzees. Nothing personal in it. There was no obvious reason for it. And I tried to think back into that shop, that nightmare place, to try to remember anything that could have been the cause.

• Pirsig 1974

  The student's biggest problem was a slave mentality which had been built into him by years of carrot-and-whip grading, a mule mentality which said, "If you don't whip me, I won't work." He didn't get whipped. He didn't work. And the cart of civilization, which he supposedly was being trained to pull, was just going to have to creak along a little slower without him.

  This is a tragedy, however, only if you presume that the cart of civilization, "the system," is pulled by mules. This is a common, vocational, "location" point of view, but it's not the Church [of Reason] attitude.

  The Church attitude is that civilization, or "the system" or "society" or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men. The purpose of abolishing grades and degrees is not to punish mules or to get rid of them but to provide an environment in which that mule can turn into a free man.

• Pirsig 1974

  The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down. You should remember that it's peace of mind you're after and not just a fixed machine.

• Pirsig 1974

  Maybe it's just the usual late afternoon letdown, but after all I've said about all these things today I just have a feeling that I've somehow talked around the point. Some could ask, “Well, if I get around all those gumption traps, then will I have the thing licked?”

  The answer, of course, is no, you still haven't got anything licked. You've got to live right too. It's the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence. If you're a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren't working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together.

  But if you're a sloppy thinker six days a week and you really try to be sharp on the seventh, then maybe the next six days aren't going to be quite as sloppy as the preceding six. What I'm trying to come up with on these gumption traps I guess, is shortcuts to living right. The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be “out there” and the person that appears to be “in here” are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.

• Pirsig 1974

  Thus the hero of the Odyssey is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a ready speaker, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send; and he can both build and sail a boat, drive a furrow as straight as anyone, beat a young braggart at throwing the discus, challenge the Phaeacian youth at boxing, wrestling or running; flay, skin, cut up and cook an ox, and be moved to tears by a song. He is in fact an excellent all-rounder; he has surpassing arête.

  Arête implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization.

  It implies a contempt for efficiency...or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself.

• Pirsig 1974

  Then he saw it. He brought out the knife and excised the one word that created the entire angering effect of that sentence. The word was "just." Why should Quality be just what you like? Why should "what you like" be "just"? What did "just" mean in this case? When separated out like this for independent examination it became apparent that "just" in this case really didn't mean a damn thing. It was a purely pejorative term, whose logical contribution to the sentence was nil. Now, with that word removed, the sentence became "Quality is what you like," and its meaning was entirely changed. It had become an innocuous truism.

• Poincaré

  Whence comes this concordance? Is it simply that the things which seem beautiful to us are those which best adapt themselves to our intelligence, and that consequently they are at the same time the implement this intelligence knows best how to use ? Or is there here a play of evolution and natural selection? Have the peoples whose ideal most conformed to their highest interest exterminated the others and taken their place? All pursued their ideals without reference to consequences, but while this quest led some to destruction, to others it gave empire.

  One is tempted to believe it. If the Greeks triumphed over the barbarians and if Europe, heir of Greek thought, dominates the world, it is because the savages loved loud colors and the clamorous tones of the drum which occupied only their senses, while the Greeks loved the intellectual beauty which hides beneath sensuous beauty, and that this intellectual beauty it is which makes intelligence sure and strong.

• Poincaré

  To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

• Russell:

  The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

• Russell (or merely attributed to him)

  Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

• Jobs or Siltanen:

  Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

• Jobs

  You know who the best managers are. They're the great individual contributors who never ever want to be a manager, but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as that.[1]

• Viktor Frankl, from memory (I cannot find the passage):

  We who have been there (in the concentration camp) know: the best did not survive.

• Karl Popper

  [2]The method of trial and error is not, of course, simply identical with the scientific and critical approach--with the method of conjecture and refutation. The method of trial and error is applied not only by Einstein but, in a more dogmatic fashion, by the amoeba also. The difference lies not so much in the trials as in the critical and constructive attitude towards errors; errors which the scientist consciously and cautiously tries to uncover in order to refute his theories with searching arguments, including appeals to the most severe experimental tests which his theories and his ingenuity permit him to design.

  The critical attitude might be described as the result of a conscious attempt to make our theories, our conjectures, suffer in our stead in the struggle of the survival of the fittest. It gives us a chance to survive the elimination of an inadequate hypothesis--when a more dogmatic attitude would eliminate it by eliminating us. (There is a touching story of an Indian community which disappeared because of its belief in the holiness of life, including that of tigers.) We thus obtain the fittest theory within our reach by the elimination of those which are less fit. (By 'fitness' I do not mean merely 'usefulness' but truth; see chapters 3 and 10, below.) I do not think that this procedure is irrational or in need of any further rational justification.

• Karel Čapek

  [3]Just imagine the silence in the world, if people talked only what they knew.

• Berkeley

  [4]To utter a word and mean nothing by it is unworthy of a philosopher. (Attributed to Berkeley by Critchley but also by Popper[5].)

• Jesus Christ Superstar

  And all the good you've done will soon get swept away you've begun to matter more than the things you say

• Jesus Christ Superstar

  If your slate is clean, then you can throw stones. If your slate is not, then leave her alone.

• Jesus Christ Superstar

  And next, the room was full of wild and angry men. They seemed to hate this man; they fell on him, and then disappeared again.

• Kopeček and Kučera 1989, possibly quoting someone (ideally, clarify/find the original source)

  To every question there is a simple, easy to understand, incorrect answer. (Quoted from memory, translated from Czech "Na každou otázku existuje jednoduchá, snadno pochopitelná, nesprávná odpověď.", stated e.g. here)

• Kopeček and Kučera 1989, possibly quoting someone (ideally, clarify/find the original source)

  There are three things that can ruin a man: wine, women and a limitless trust of experts. (Quoted from memory, translated from Czech.)

• Kopeček and Kučera 1989, possibly quoting someone (ideally, clarify/find the original source)

  The tortoise is here with us since it is best as far as tortoisehood goes. (Quoted from memory, translated from Czech.)

• Edmund Burke, but only erroneously attributed per Misquotations

  The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

• Galileo Galilei

  Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards. (Discovered thanks to User:Equinox.)

• Jan Werich

  This guy does this, that one does that, and taken in aggregate, they accomplish a lot. (A translation Czech "Ten dělá to a ten zas tohle a všichni dohromady udělají moc." A praise to labor division but also to laborers, somewhat suggestive of the ideology of Czechoslovak socialism. A complete song: here.)

• Unknown

  The struggle against entropy in the form of mess/disorder is in vein and doomed to failure. (A translation from Czech "Boj s entropií ve formě nepořádku je marný a předem prohraný".)

• Mark Twain, probably merely attributed

  Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel.[6]