I enjoy reading books about the history of science, mathematics, logic, and philosophy of science. I especially enjoy reading the classics in these areas as many of the problems we briefly recognize and then sweep under the rug in economics are at their core fundamental problems in methodology and logic that have been recognized for a very long time. In this reading I have run across quotes that I have found either funny, useful, or profound. I hope you may also get some utility out of them.
1) Quote: "Out of fifty mathematical papers presented in brief at such a meeting, it is a rare mathematician indeed who really understands what more than half a dozen are about."
From: Eric Temple Bell
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (p. 7)
Context: Meetings papers and who understands them.
2) Quote: "By studying the masters, not their pupils."
From: N.H. Abel (Mathematician)
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (p. 12)
Context: On how he was so prolific w/his research output in such a short time.
3) Quote: " 'Obvious' is the most dangerous word in mathematics."
From: Eric Temple Bell
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science
Context: The use of obvious in mathematical proofs.
4) Quote: "Hanging at dawn tends to focus the mind."
From: Johnson (unknown)
Source: Stephen Hawkings' mother in Movie A Brief History of Time.
Context: On why son became so productive after his disease was diagnosed.
5) Quote: "An 'improperly posed' question."
From: Eric Temple Bell
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (p. 26)
Context: A question about the origin of the postulate much as postulate a continuous function. If you don't like the calculus where the continuous function came from is 'improperly posed' it's too late then!!
6) Quote: "Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen."
From: Albert Einstein.
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science & Readings in Philosophy of Science "Why we should believe theories or something."
Context: Evident isn't it!
7) Quote: "Nobody can say what a variable is."
From: H. Weyl
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science
Context: Defining a variable
8) Quote: "Fashion as King is sometimes a very stupid ruler."
From: Eric Temple Bell
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (p.146)
9) Quote: …In particular, the axioms of plane geometry are true within the limits of experiment on the surface of a plane sheet of paper, and yet we know that the sheet is really covered with a number of small ridges and furrows upon which (the total curvature being not zero) these axioms are not true.
From: W.K. Clifford. On the Space-Theory of Matter
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (p. 204 - 205)
Context: Discussing metrics
10) Quote: "Entities shall not be multiplied beyond necessity."
From: W. Occam (razor: Occam's razor)
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (p. 269)
Context: Abstraction vs. reality
11) Quote: "Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth."
From: Eric Temple Bell
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (p. 291)
12) Quote: "When it doesn't rain I have no need to fix the hole in my roof and when it rains I can't go outside to fix it."
Source: Unknown
Context: I heard in passing when someone was talking about the deficit (budget) and it never being a good time to address it.
13) Quote: In a certain village a barber shaves all those, and only those, who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself?
From: Unknown (not quoted)
Source: Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science (p. 403)
Context: Paradoxes in math
14) Quote: …"As for the knowledge of fact, it is originally sense and ever after, memory. And for knowledge of consequence, which I have said before is called science, it is not absolute but conditional."
From: Thomas Hobbes
Source: Leviathan Chapter VII
Context: Discussing what is knowledge and science
15) Quote: "…It is better not to look at than to look carelessly."
From: Henri Poincare' (French Mathematician)
Source: His book Science and Method "Introduction"
16) Quote: "Science is built up of facts, as a house is built up of stones, but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a heap of stones is a house."
From: Henri Poincare'
Source: Reliable Knowledge (p. 142).
17) Quote: "…Sociology is the science w/ the greatest number of methods and the least results."
From: Henri Poincare'
Source: Science and Methods (p. 20)
18) Quote: "But what we must aim at is not so much to ascertain resemblances and differences, as to discover similarities hidden under apparent discrepancies."
From: Henri Poincare'
Source: Science and Methods (p. 21)
19) Quote: "…It is not order only, but unexpected order, that has value."
From: Henri Poincare'
Source: Science and Methods (p. 32)
20) Quote: "Chance is only the measure of our ignorance."
From: Henri Poincare'
Source: Science and Methods (p. 65)
21) Quote: "…intuition cannot give us exactness, nor ever certainty, and this has been recognized more and more."
From" Henri Poincare'
Source: Science and Methods (p. 123)
Context: Logic vs. intuition
22) Quote: "They have shown that there is no such thing as an "a prior" synthetic judgment (The term employed by Kant to designate the judgments that can neither be demonstrated analytically, nor reduced to an identity, not established experimentally)…"
From: Henri Poincare'
Source: Science and Methods (p. 146)
23) Quote: "I don't know"
From: Lagrange
Source: Men of Mathematics E.T. Bell (p. 9)
24) Quote: "I see I have made myself a slave to philosophy [science], but if I get free of Mr. Lucas business [incessant, trivial and 'improperly posed' criticism of his theory of optics by Mathematician Lucas], I will resolutely bid adieu to it eternally, excepting what I do for my private satisfaction, or leave to come out after me; for I see a man must either resolve to put out nothing new, or become a slave to defend it."
From: Sir Isaac Newton
Source: Men of Mathematics E.T. Bell (p. 107 -108)
25) Quote: "If I have seen a little farther than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."
From: Sir Isaac Newton
Source: Men of Mathematics E.T. Bell (p. 93)
26) Quote: "Men pass away but their deeds abide."
From: A. Cauchy (French Mathematician's last words)
Source: Men of Mathematics E.T. Bell (p. 293)
27) Quote: "You must always invert."
From: C.G.J. Jacobi's (German born mathematician)
Source: Men of Mathematics E.T. Bell (p. 323)
Context: When asked the secret of mathematical discoveries
28) Quote: "Your father would never have married and you wouldn't be here now, if he had insisted on knowing all the girls in the world before marrying one."
From: C.G.J. Jacobi
Source: Men of Mathematics E.T. Bell (p. 330)
Context: to a student who wanted to learn from other some more before offering his own work.
29) Quote: "…but a philosopher like him [Fourier] should have known the sole end of science is the honor of the human mind, and that under this title a question about number is worth as much as a question about the system of the world."
From: C.G.J. Jacobi
Source: Men of Mathematics E.T. Bell.. (p. 338)
30) Quote: "May not music be described as the mathematics of sense, mathematics as music of the reason."
From: Sylvester, J.J.
Source: Men of Mathematics E.T. Bell (p. 404)
31) Quote: "To publish an article of real merit every week - that is impossible."
From: Weierstrass on Poincare's deluge of papers
Source: Men of Mathematics E.T. Bell (p. 428)
32) Quote: "Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us."
From: E.T. Bell
Source: Men of Mathematics (p. 481)
33) Quote: "All of these dislikes and objections are of course themselves meaningless unless they can be backed by a definite program to replace what is rejected."
From: E.T. Bell. Commenting on Kronecher's objection to all mathematics based on anything but positive integers.
Source: Men of Mathematics (p. 482)
34) Quote: "Mathematical discoveries, small or great…are never born of spontaneous generation. They always presuppose a soil seeded with preliminary knowledge and well prepared by labor, both conscious and subconscious."
From: Swiss Mathematical periodical: L'Ensegnment Mathematique 1902 and 1904.
Source: Men of Mathematics (p. 548) (See also another example Poincare': Science and Methods (p. 551) in Men of Mathematics)
35) Quote: "Intuition (male, female or mathematical) has been greatly overrated. Intuition is the root of all superstition."
From: E.T. Bell
Source: Men of Mathematics (p. 567)
36) Quote: "There can be no time without space."
From: Paul Davis
Source: The Mind of God (p. 49)
37) Quote: "No one who is closed off from mathematics can ever grasp the full significance of the natural order that is woven so deeply into the fabric of physical reality."
From: Paul Davis
Source: The Mind of God (p. 93)
38) Quote: "Undecidable propositions run through mathematics like threads of gristle that criss-cross a steak in such a dense way that they cannot be cut out without the entire steak's being estranged."
From: Douglas Hofstadter author of Alan Turing: The Emgima in reference to Turing and the mere well know Godel's theorem on self reference in mathematical logic, whereby by logic convults into a do loop. for example see quote # 13.
Source: The Mind of God (p. 107)
39) Quote: "The popular image of mathematics as a collection of precise facts, linked together by well-defined logical paths is revealed to be false. There is randomness and hence uncertainty in mathematics, just as there is in physics."
From: Paul Davis, discussing algorithmic information theory and Gregory Chaitin development of the Diophantine equation
Source: The Mind of God (p. 132)
40) Quote: "The book of nature is written in mathematical language."
From: Galileo
Source: The Mind of God (p. 140)
41) Quote: "So much the worse for the experiment. The theory is right!"
From: Albert Einstein, when asked what he would do if the experiment didn't agree with the theory.
Source: The Mind of God (p. 175)
42) Quote: "It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit the experiment."
From: Paul Disae (Theoretical Physicist)
Source: The Mind of God (p. 176)
43) Quote: "I hate it when people try to be profound, sometimes the simplest words are the most profound."
Source: Mellie E. Smith
44) Quote: "…It is pretentious to use mathematics when words will do and it is equally pretentious to use "high brow" mathematics when more elementary methods will do almost as well."
From: Frank Hahn
Source: (1990) "John Hicks the Theorist," Economic Journal vol. 100 June; 539-49.
45) Quote: "Hypotheses are tested in bundles."
From: Pierre Duhem
Source: Introductory Readings in the Philosophy of Science (p. 67)
46) Quote: "Where Theories intersect, laws are usually hard to come by."
From: Nancy Cartwright
Source: Introductory Readings in the Philosophy of Science (p. 45)
47) Quote; "Philosophers of science have learned a great deal about science, but the knowledge falls short of any usable algorithm for scientific practice or theory choice."
From: Daniel M. Hausman
Source: The Philosophy of Economics: An Anthology Introduction (p. 24)
48) Quote: "When an effect depends upon a concurrence of causes, those causes must be studied one at a time, and their laws separately investigated, if we wish, through the causes, to obtain the power of either predicting or controlling the effect."
From: John S. Mill
Source: Philosophy of Economics (p. 53)
49) Quote: "[The pursuit of wealth] of all hypotheses equally simple, is nearest the truth."
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Philosophy of Economics (p. 54)
50) Quote: "…those who disavow theory cannot make one step without theorizing."
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Philosophy of Economics (p. 55)
51) Quote: "The conclusions of Political Economy, consequently, like those of geometry, are only true,…,in the abstract…"
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Philosophy of Economics (p. 57) (cross reference w/ #9): see last paragraph of p. 57
52) Quote: "When the principles of Political Economy are to be applied to a particular case, then it is necessary to take into account all the individual circumstances of that case; not only examining to which of the sets of circumstances contemplated by the abstract science the circumstances of the case in question correspond, but likewise what other circumstances may exist in that case, which not being common to it with any large and strongly worded class of cases, have not fallen under the cognizance of the science. These circumstances have been called disturbing causes…
When the disturbing causes are known, the allowance for then in no way distracts nor constitutes any deviations from the a priori method.. Like friction in mechanics to which they have been compared,… in time many of them are brought within the pale of the abstract science itself, and their effect is found to admit of as accurate an estimation as those mere striking effects which they modify.
The disturbing causes have their laws, as the cause which are thereby disturbed have theirs…"
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Philosophy of Economics (p. 60 - 61)
53) Quote: "…he may be an excellent professor of abstract science; for a person may be of great use who points out correctly what effects will follow from certain combinations of possible circumstances,… If however he does no more than this, he must rest contented to take no share in practical politics; to have no opinion, or to hold it with extreme modesty, on the applications which should be made of the existing circumstances."
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Philosophy of Economics (p. 63)
54) Quote: "Each undervalues that part of the materials of thought with which he is not familiar."
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Philosophy of Economics (p. 64)
55) Quote: "A not unnatural consequence is that people think themselves competent to reason about economic problems, however complex, without any such preparatory scientific training as would be unwisely considered essential in other departments of inquiry. This temptation to discuss economic questions without adequate scientific training is all the greater, because economic conditions exert so powerful an influence upon men's material interest."
From: J. Neville Keynes
Source: Philosophy of Economics (p. 73)
56) Quote; "…without the aid of an extensive knowledge of facts, there is a danger of ascribing to economic doctrines a much wider range of applications than really belongs to them."
From: J. Neville Keynes
Source: Philosophy of Economics (p. 92)
57) Quote: "…there is a tendency to forget that the deductive method in its complete form consists of three stages, only one of which is actually deductive, the two others being the inductive determination of premises, and the inductive verification of conclusions."
From: J. Neville Keynes
Source: Philosophy of Economics (p. 90)
58) Quote: "Models should be used, not believed."
From: Henri Theil
Source: Principles of Econometrics
59) Quote: "Subjective certainty is inversely proportional to objective certainty."
From: Bertrand Russell
Source: Reliable Knowledge (p. 22)
60) Quote: "Indefinite expression is the best exponent of imperfect knowledge."
From: Louis Pasteur
Source: Reliable Knowledge (p. 195)
61) Quote: "With such limited abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that I should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of scientific men on some important points."
From: Charles Darwin
Source: Introduction to Origin of Species (p. 7)
62) Quote: "So profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life.:
From: Charles Darwin
Source: Introduction to Origin of Species (p. 87)
63) Quote: "Extinction and natural selection go hand in hand."
From: Charles Darwin
Source: Introduction to Origin of Species (p.179)
64) Quote: "How easily we can be mistaken in matters which concern us closely; and how much also the judgments of our friends must be suspect when they are in our favor."
From: Rene' Descartes
Source: Discourse on Method and the Meditations
65) Quote: "All those who hold opinions quite opposed to ours are not on that account barbarians or savages."
From: Rene' Descartes
Source: Discourse on Method and the Meditations
66) Quote: "…One cannot so well group a thing and make it one's own when it is learnt from another person, as when one discovers it oneself."
From: Rene' Descartes
Source: Discourse on Method and the Meditations
67) Quote: "For the same thing that might, perhaps, with some reason, seem very imperfect if quite alone, may be very perfect in its nature if it is looked upon as part of the whole universe."
From: Rene' Descartes
Source: Discourse on Method and the Meditations, (p. 135) 4th meditation
68) Quote: "It is a fault which can be observed in most disputes, that, truth being midway between two opinions that are held, each side departs the further from it the greater his passion for contradiction."
From: Rene' Descartes
Source: Discourse on Method and the Meditations
69) Quote: "Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure."
From: Charles Darwin
Source: Introduction to Origin of Species (p. 519)
70) Quote: "Anyone whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory."
From: Charles Darwin
Source: Introduction to Origin of Species (p.521)
71) Quote: "The rules for classifying will no doubt become simpler when we have a definite object in view."
From: Charles Darwin
Source: Introduction to Origin of Species (p.526)
72) Quote: "I know of nothing, in my education, to which I think myself more indebted for whatever capacity of thinking I have attained [than logic]."
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Autobiography of J.S. Mill (p. 18)
73) Quote: "A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can."
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Autobiography of J.S. Mill (p. 26)
74) Quote: "The continuation of this article in the second number of the [Westminster] Review was written by me under my father's eye, and (except as practice in composition, in which respect it was, to me, more useful than anything else I ever wrote) was of little or no value."
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Autobiography of J.S. Mill (p. 64) footnote [The inability to accurately access the consumers view of your own work]
75) Quote: "When reason is against a man, a man will be against reason."
From: Thomas Hobbes
Source: Autobiography of J.S. Mill (p. 104)
76) Quote: "…many false opinions may be changed for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are the result."
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Autobiography of J.S. Mill (p. 153)
77) Quote: "Men are not more zealous for the truth than they often are for error."
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Liberty (p. 231)
78) Quote: "No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think."
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Liberty (p. 236)
79) Quote: "Tho' purblind man sees but part of the chain, the nearest link, his eyes not carrying to the equal beam; that poizes all above."
From: Benjamin Franklin
Source: The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (p. 79) **This is actually a line from Dryden!!**
80) Quote: "Like a man traveling in foggy weather: Those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapt up in a fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side; but near him all appears clear. Tho' in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them."
From: Benjamin Franklin
Source: His autobiography (p. 153 - 154).
81) Quote: "Theory dominates the experimental work from its initial planning up to the finishing touches in the laboratory."
From: Sir Karl Popper
Source: Logic of Scientific Discovery (p. 107)
82) Quote: (Not really a quote but a paraphrase) 'New ideas pass through three phases of denial. First, they are wrong, Second, they are against region. Third, they are old news, trivial, common sense.'
From: J.S. Mill
Source: Fuzzy Thinking by Bent Kosko (p. 41)
83) Quote: "[There are 3 classes of problems in 'normal' science] - determination of significant fact, matching facts w/ theory, and articulation of theory…"
From: Thomas Kuhn
Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (p. 34)
84) Quote: "…since no paradigm ever solves all the problems it defines and since no two paradigms leave all the same problems unsolved, paradigm debates always involve the question: 'Which problem is it more significant to have solved?'"
From: Thomas Kuhn
Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (p. 110)
85) Quote: "The competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proofs."
From: Thomas Kuhn
Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (p. 148)
86) Quote: "Communication across the revolutionary [different paradigms] divide is inevitably partial."
From: Thomas Kuhn
Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (p. 149)
87) Quote: "…working scientist are not going … to change their ways of thinking, in doing science, ex more philosophic, because they have Popper and Fegerabend pontificating at them like eighteenth-century divines…"
From: Margaret Masterman
Source: Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (. 60)
88) Quote: "There is no falsification before the emergence of a better theory."
From: Imre Lakatos
Source: Criticisms and the Growth of Knowledge (p. 119)
89) Quote: "Success in Science is the art of compromise."
From: George C. Davis
90) Quote: "One ounce of pretension is worth a pound of manure."
From: Steel Magnolias
91) Quote: "Next to the hunger to experience a thing, men have perhaps no stronger hunger than to forget."
From: Herman Hesse
Source: The Journey East (p. 57)
92) Quote: "This enables us to regard all science as applied logic."
From: Nagel and Cohen
Source: Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (p. 191)
93) Quote: "It is a mark of scientific genius to be sensitive to difficulties where less gifted people pass untroubled with doubt."
From: Nagel and Cohen
Source: Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (p. 200)
94) Quote: "Men give themselves up to the first anticipation's of their minds."
From: John Locke
Source: Karl Popper Conjectures and Refutations (p. 14)
95) Quote: "Every solution of a problem raises new unsolved problems; the more so the deeper the original problem and the bolder its solution."
From: Karl Popper
Source: Karl Popper Conjectures and Refutations ( p. 28)
96) Quote: "…The role of deductive logical reasoning remains all-important for the critical approach…because only by purely deductive reasoning is it possible for us to discover what our theories imply, and thus to criticize them effectively."
From: Karl Popper
Source: Karl Popper Conjectures and Refutations ( p. 51)
97) Quote: "A false theory may be as great an achievement as a true one. And many false theories have been more helpful in our search for truth than some less interesting theories that are still accepted."
From: Karl Popper
Source: Karl Popper Conjectures and Refutations ( p. 141)
98) Quote: "Properly understood, a mathematical hypothesis does not claim that anything exists in nature which corresponds to it - neither to the terms with which it operates, nor the functional dependencies which it appears to assert. It erects, as it were a fictitious mathematical world behind that of appearance, but without the claim that this world exists."
From: Berkeley
Source: Karl Popper Conjectures and Refutations ( p. 169)
99) Quote: "Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature, but imposes its laws upon nature."
From: Immanuel Kant
Source: Karl Popper Conjectures and Refutations ( p. 180)
100) Quote: "No logically possible future observation can ever contradict the class of part observations."
From: Karl Popper
Source: Karl Popper Conjectures and Refutations ( p. 190) (actually a corollary to a logical proof attributed to Hume)
101) Quote; "…We have no reason to regard a new theory as better than an old theory - to believe it is nearer the truth - until we have derived from the new theory new predictions which were unobtained from the old theory…and until we have found that these new predictions were successful…"
From: Karl Popper
Source: Karl Popper Conjectures and Refutations ( p. 246)
102) Quote: "Probability estimates are not falsifiable. Neither, are they, of course, verifiable and this for the same reasons as hold for any other hypotheses, seeing that no experiment result however numerous and favorable, can ever finally establish that the relative frequency of 'heads' is 1/2 and will always be 1/26."
From: Karl Popper
Source: Logic of Scientific Discovery (p. 191)
103) Quote: "…we should always try to clarify and strengthen our opponent's position as much as possible before criticizing him, if we wish our criticism to be worth while."
From: Karl Popper
Source: Logic of Scientific Discovery (p. 260) Footnote *5
104) Quote: "I'm not young enough to know everything."
From: Anonymous
Source: Found in a book of Zen sayings in Houston.
105) Quote: If you ask me anything I don't know, I am not going to answer it.
From: Yogi Berra
Source: "The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said"
106) Quote: "They did what disciples tend to do: They reduced his system to absurdity."
From: Alberta Coffa
Source: The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap (p. 87)
107) Quote: "As we try to bring clarity to that discipline, our role is not to criticize, but to make explicit what has been implicit."
From: Alberta Coffa
Source: The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap (p. 118)
108) Quote: "Concepts are tools intended to turn the subjective into the objective."
From: Alberta Coffa
Source: The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap (p. 175)
109) Quote: "An error which seemed finally refuted or dislodged from thought often needs only put on a new suit of phrases to be welcomed back to its old quarters and allowed to repose Unquestioned for another cycle of ages."
From: J.S. Mill
Source: J.S. Mill's Philosophy of Scientific Method (p.114) Edited by E. Nagel 1950
110) Quote: "...Logic (and therefore probability as a branch of logic) is not concerned with what men do believe, but what they ought to believe, if they are to believe correctly."
From: John Venn
Source: Logic of Chance pg. 78
111) Quote: "…Perfect knowledge alone can give certainty, and in nature perfect knowledge would be infinite knowledge, which clearly beyond our capacities…"
From: Jevons
Source: Logic of Chance pg. 209
112) Quote: "The more special and minute our statistics [i.e. the more heterogeneous our classification] the better, provided only we can get enough of them [large enough sample]…however, this is impossible in many cases. We are therefore obliged to neglect one attribute after another, and so to enlarge the contents of our class; at the avowed risk of somewhat increased variety and unsuitability in the members of it…we continue to do so, until we no longer gain more in quantity [sample size?] than we lose in quality [precision?]."
From: John Venn
Source: Logic of Chance pg. 220
113) Quote: "In many influential circles, ambiguity disguised as simplicity…is a virtue. The less said about what is implicitly assumed about a statistical model generating data, the less many economists seem to think is being assumed. The new credo is let sleeping dogs lie…the opportunity cost of doing careful empirical work in one paper is all of the other papers you could have written while you were being careful in that paper."
From: John Heckman
Source: JEL June 1192
114) Quote: "It is not the lie that passeth through the minde, but the lie that sinketh in it, that doth the hurt."
From: Francis Bacon
Source: Essays: Of Truth pg. 4
115) Quote: "It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it."
From: Goethe
Source: Book of Thoughts pg. 663
116) Quote: "…some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently - though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible."
From: Aldous Hufley
Source: Brave New World
117) Quote: "The perfect is the enemy of the good."
From: John McCain-Senator
Source: This Week in Washington
Context: Why he voted for good legislation that was not perfect legislation.
118) Quote: "The lack of mathematical insight shows up in nothing as surprisingly unbounded precision in numerical computations."
From: C.F.W. Gauss
Source: O. Morgenstern "On the accuracy of Economic Observations" pg. 99. Chapter VI.
119) Quote: "The properly handled mathematical formulation has the virtue of showing us clearly where the limitations of our knowledge are."
From: O. Morgenstern
Source: O. Morgenstern "On the accuracy of Economic Observations" pg. 114
120) Quote: "Ah, but a man's search should exceed his grasp, or what is heaven for…"
From: Robert Browning
Source: Heard in This Week in Washington but it actually from his Poem 'Men and Women'.
121) Quote: "It will be remembered that the seventy translations of the Septuagint were shut up in seventy separate rooms with the Hebrew text and brought out with them, when they emerged, seventy identical translations. Would the same miracle be vouchsafed if seventy multiple correlators were shut up with the same statistical material?"
From: J.M. Keynes
Source: "On a Method of Statistical Business- Cycle Research: A Comment. "The Economic Journal V.50 Issue 197 (March 1940) pg. 154-156
122) Quote: "…it is usually better to say nothing than to give wrong information which…in turn misleads hosts of later investigators who are not always able to check the quality of the data processed by the earlier investigators."
From: O. Morgenstern
Source: O. Morgenstern "On the accuracy of Economic Observations" pg. 55
123) Quote: "To understand philosophy [x], one must do philosophy [x]. One must seek the truth to know it."
From: Keith Lehrer
Source: Theory of Knowledge XIV
124) Quote: "Progress in economics consist almost entirely in a progressive improvement in the choice of models…But it is of the essence of a model that one does not fill in real values for the variable functions. To do so would make it useless as a model. For as soon as this is done, the model loses its generality and its value as a mode of thought…Economics is a science of thinking in terms of models which are relevant to the contemporary world. It is compelled to be this, because unlike the typical natural science, the material to which it is applied is, in too many respects, not homogenous."
From: J.M. Keynes
Source: Letter to Roy Harrod in Hausman's Philosophy of Economics: An Anthology pg.300
125) Quote: "The way to do significant science is be ahead of the curve. There is no other advice to giving a budding scientist who wants to reach the top."
From: David Baltimore, Nobel Prize Winner in 1985 in Molecular Biology
Source: Ahead of the Curve: David Baltimore's Life in Science by Shane Crotty pg.55
126) Quote: "Any pursuit so far beyond present knowledge to be pathfinding is not a logical progression from established order. That in fact is the dirty secret of high science - it is not logical. At best it is analogical and often one is driven by a simple hunch."
From: David Baltimore
Source: Ahead of the Curve: David Baltimore's Life in Science by Shane Crotty pg. 67
127) Quote: "My life is dedicated to increasing knowledge. We need no more justification for scientific research than that…I work because I want to understand."
From: David Baltimore
Source: Ahead of the Curve: David Baltimore's Life in Science by Shane Crotty pg. 81
128) Quote: "String Theory, on the other hand, ties together a number of existing theories in a very pretty way, and makes a number of predictions about the way black holes an particles behave, but none of the predictions are testable or observable. While String theory might be mathematically consistent, and even beautiful, it is not yet science."
From: Charles Scife
Source: Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea pg.199
129) Quote: "I am too ardent in execution, and to impatient in difficulties."
From: Victor Frankenstein
Source: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein pg. 7
130) Quote: "None but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements of science."
From: Victor Frankenstein
Source: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein pg. 44
131) Quote: "…I realize that the conceptions of a philosopher are placed beyond the judgement of the crowd, because it is his loving duty to seek the truth in all things…"
From: Nicolaus Copernicus
Source: Preface to "On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres.
"Standing on the Shoulders of Giants" pg. 8
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