The soul of man is a far country, which cannot be approached or explored. — Heraclitus # Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Quotations
Hockey Practice Will Never Be Cancelled
Under no circumstances will hockey practice ever be cancelled. Ever. Even on days when school is cancelled, practice is still on. A game may be cancelled due to inclement weather because of travel concerns for the visiting team, but it would have to rain razor blades and bocce balls to cancel hockey practice at your local rink. It’s good karma to respect the game. — John Buccigross, ESPN.com Read more →
Only Variety Can Absorb Variety
The well-known law of cybernetics — “Only variety can absorb variety” — states that a system cannot meet increasing variety in its environment unless it increases the range of its response repertoire (Ashby’s law of requisite variety, 1956). In lay terms it means one has to be just as messy as the surrounding situation. — Ninety-Nine Rules for Managing “Faster, Better, Cheaper” Projects Read more →
Visualize the Properties
Imagine and identify the few properties of your product or service that will gratify the customer’s need. Visualize the properties, desire them yourself, and everywhere ensure and intensify their presence. — Jim McCarthy Read more →
The Goal on a Project
The goal on a project is not to have the correct plan in advance but to make the right decisions every day as things that were unknown become known. — Jim McCarthy Read more →
Evolving a System
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works . . . A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. — John Gall Read more →
Out of the Turmoil
Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, “To-morrow, success or failure won’t matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.” — William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair Read more →
People and Their Silly Principles
If every person is to be banished from society who runs into debt and cannot pay–if we are to be peering into everybody’s private life, speculating upon their income, and cutting them if we don’t approve of their expenditure–why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling Vanity Fair would be! Every man’s hand would be against his neighbour in this case, my dear sir, and the benefits of civilization would be done away with. We should be quarrelling, abusing, avoiding one another. Our houses would become caverns, and we should go in rags because we cared for nobody. Rents would go down. Parties wouldn’t be given any more. All the tradesmen of the town would be bankrupt. Wine, wax-lights, comestibles, rouge, crinoline-petticoats, diamonds, wigs, Louis-Quatorze gimcracks, and old china, park hacks, and splendid high-stepping carriage horses–all the delights of life, I say,–would go to the deuce, if people did but… Read more →
The Three Requirements for Happiness
To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless. — Gustave Flaubert Read more →
The Vast and Endless Sea
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the workers to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery Read more →
A Chicken That Walked Backward
When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathé News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been anticlimax. — Flannery O’Connor Read more →
Those Who Are Really in Earnest
Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences. — Susan B. Anthony Read more →
Just Trying to Learn
I’m not trying to have a career, I’m not trying to be rich, I’m just trying to learn. — Francis Ford Coppola Read more →
Obama on Letterman
I think it’s important to realize that I was actually black before the election. — Barack Obama Read more →
Teddy’s Accomplices
He dared us to call his bluff, and, when we didn’t, he made all of us complicit in what he’d done. — Mark Steyn Read more →
Ghost World
REBECCA: This is so bad it’s almost good. ENID: This is so bad it’s gone past good and back to bad again. — Ghost World Read more →
Morality is Insignificant
Fidelity to a personal code of morality would seem to fade in significance as the public sphere, like an enormous sun, blinds us to all else. — Joyce Carol Oates Read more →
Famous Quotes Revisited
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase. — Martin Luther King Jr. The staircase?! That doesn’t make sense. Why can’t I see the staircase? Am I drunk? Read more →
Twitter: 2009-08-17
My uncle fell down and cracked his head open. He's 80. No, he's not a member of Aerosmith. # RT @ericmusselman: Jerry West "Sometimes talent gets in the way of people being able to play well together " # Read more →
Polite Acerbity
I am learning to bring into [my voice] that polite acerbity that makes people feel that far from being welcome they are not even tolerated and are under continual and scathing analysis at every moment. — F. Scott Fitzgerald Read more →