Tidbits of My Philosophy on Life
My most ultimate motto:
Do what you love and love what you do.
"I do not believe we have much to fear from the actions of any individual scientist. Few, contrary to the pope's concern, aspire to play God. Science has no tolerance for such fantasies... what scientists need to do - and quickly - is come out of their laboratory lairs and be seen in public. You need to know about their aspirations, dreams, hopes, and values. You need to know they stand shoulder to shoulder with all of us in wanting a better world. They see a better future and a way to get there." -Arthur Caplan in this article
"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." -Attributed to Thomas Jefferson
"There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens. This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time studiously ignoring his fundamental ones." -Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape
"Skill can be taught; tenacity cannot... There have now been many studies of elite performers -- international violinists, chess grand masters, professional ice-skaters, mathematicians, and so forth -- and the biggest difference researchers find between them and lesser performers is the cumulative amount of deliberate practice they've had. Indeed, the most important talent may be the talent for practice itself." -Atul Gawande, in Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
Fabulous quotes from Rapture: A Raucous Tour of Cloning, Transhumanism, and the New Era of Immortality by Brian Alexander:
"Scientists rather naively assume that if one presents enough data in support of a theory, the theory will be adopted as sound... this is not how politics works and it is not how politicians behave. So biologists try to keep their heads down. For most of the years since World War II... this worked. The politicians did their thing and did not delve too deeply into the work of the scientists. They gave the scientists money, the scientists cured polio and smallpox and fought the war on cancer and assumed, rightly, that the politicians did not particularly care about the intricacies of restriction enzymes, say, or cellular receptors. Everybody was happy."
"Biologists deeply resented the accusations that they were somehow less moral than congressmen or columnists or the bio-Luddites. The scientists had wives and husbands, golden retrievers, mortgages, and cars they'd like to trade in for a new Audi. They almost never laughed demonically. And they had a long history of policing themselves... Some scientists spent about as much time pondering the ethics of their work as they did actually doing it."
Bits of sagacity from Advice for a Young Investigator by Santiago Ramon y Cajal:
"I believe that all outstanding work, in art as well as science, results from immense zeal applied to a great idea."
"There are no small problems. Problems which appear small are large problems which are not understood."
"One might say that work substitutes for talent, or better yet that it creates talent."
"You should abandon science... if your soul isn't flooded with the emotion of anticipated pleasure when approaching the long-awaited and solemn moment of the fiat lux."
"MIT is the kind of place you love to hate, but you really don't hate it. What you hate about it is the enormous pressure that people put on you here and which you also put on yourself. What you love about it is the enormous pressure people put on you and you put on yourself and that you can accomplish and succeed and produce and learn... students are telling me they're having a great experience here however you look at it. They're exhausted, they don't sleep enough, they don't eat enough, they get frustrated and depressed, but at the end of the road, they have a fabulous experience, but, they hate how hard it was to get there." -Dean of Student Life Larry G. Benedict, in The Tech
"I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means that you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it." -Robert Sapolsky, in Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
"If you are determined to be lazy, you must at least be efficient." -Karen Duffy, in A Slob in the Kitchen
My favorite bits of Pluto's Republic by Peter Medawar:
"We should quite often have occasion to say 'I used to think that once, but now I have come to hold a rather different opinion.' People who never say as much are either ineffectual or dangerous."
"There is a sense in which [a scientist] must be free, but another in which his thought must be very precisely regimented; there is poetry in science, but also a lot of bookkeeping."
"Biologists work very close to the frontier between bewilderment and understanding."
"Scientists, on the whole, are amiable and well-meaning creatures. There must be very few wicked scientists. There are, however, plenty of wicked philosophers, wicked priests, and wicked politicians."
"What would have offended Sanderson about teaching the Young Earth [creationist] view is not just that it is false but that it is petty, small-minded, parochial, unimaginative, unpoetic and downright boring compared to the staggering, mind-expanding truth." -Richard Dawkins, in A Devil's Chaplain
"These jobs [in computer science] are way more interesting than going to Wall Street or being a lawyer -- or, I can argue, than anything but perhaps biology, and there it's just a tie." -Bill Gates (who has a good reason to be biased toward computer science!) in Scientific American
"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." -Timothy Leary
"A good scientist is a person in whom the childhood quality of perennial curiosity lingers on. Once he gets an answer, he has other questions." -Frederick Seitz
"While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know." -Bertrand Russell
"Our strength is often composed of the weaknesses we're damned if we're going to show." -Mignon McLaughlin
"There's no thrill in easy sailing when the skies are clear and blue;
There's no joy in simply doing things which anyone can do.
But there is some satisfaction which is mighty sweet to take,
When you reach a destination that you thought you'd never make."
-Spirella
"A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
The beak that grips her, she becomes.
-Adrienne Rich, "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law"
"The heart has reasons which reason cannot understand." -Blaise Pascal
"'I think you're lying,' I said, confused again, aswirl in words.
'I noticed that. You'll never know. It must be very frustrating to be caged like a Chinaman's cricket in a limited mind.'" -John Gardner, Grendel
"I can resist anything except temptation." -Oscar Wilde
"True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men. To employ these rare minds on such work is like running a steam engine by burning diamonds." -C. S. Peirce
"I learned a lot of different things from different schools. MIT is a very good place... I was just in love with it. It has developed for itself a spirit, so that every member of the whole place thinks that it's the most wonderful place in the world... and while you don't get a good sense of proportion there, you do get an excellent sense of being with it and in it, and having motivation and desire to keep on." -Richard Feynman (MIT Class of 1939), "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
"I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one." -Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
"A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring..."
-Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism
"Among people I have met, the few whom I would term 'great' all share a kind of unquestioned, fierce dedication; an utter lack of doubt about the value of their activities (or at least an internal impulse that drives through any such angst); and above all, a capacity to work (or at least to be mentally alert for unexpected insights) at every available moment of every day of their lives." -Stephen Jay Gould, The Lying Stones of Marrakech
"The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not the politicians and the statesmen but the scientists." -W. H. Auden
"Cheetah genes cooperate with cheetah genes but not with camel genes, and vice versa. This is not because cheetah genes, even in the most poetic sense, see any virtue in the preservation of the cheetah species. They are not working to save the cheetah from extinction like some molecular World Wildlife Fund." -Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder
"Always be suspicious of conclusions that reinforce uncritical hope and follow comforting traditions of Western thought." -Stephen Jay Gould, The Flamingo's Smile
"Boring is the cardinal sin a woman can commit." -Rick Marin in Glamour magazine
"Yeah, I am harsh. I'm also stubborn, self-sufficient, demanding, and always right." -Samantha (Kim Catrall), Sex and the City, season 6, episode 4.
"When you're depressed, all you want to do is sleep, and when you're at MIT, you have very little time to sleep, and therefore all you want to do is sleep and your body feels the same as when you're depressed and it's hard to tell whether you're depressed or just tired from all the work." -Pepper White, The Idea Factory
"Global warming does not sound like such a bad deal if you are stuck in the middle of a New England winter." -Peter Ward, The End of Evolution
"'I like it when men think I'm smarter than they are,' Sam said. 'Because it's usually true.'" -Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City
"'Who was that man you were kissing in the cab?' Skipper asked.
'Just another man I either don't want or can't have,' Samantha said. 'Like you.'
'But you can have me,' Skipper said. 'I'm available.'
'Exactly,' Sam said." -Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City
"Penny candy is a nickel. Water costs a dollar. Laughter's still a bargain." -Citibank ad at the corner of 17th and I streets
"I believe that, if we could forsee the future, none of us would ever fall in love. It all comes to nothing one way or another." -Kyoko Mori, Shizuko's Daughter
"If you think that you have a set of principles that guides how you act in every situation, something called character, reasearch heavily suggests that you merely may not have been exposed to the situations in which to test it. Character may be an essential, but largely baseless, story we tell ourselves." -Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza
"And kisses are a better fate/than wisdom." - e e cummings, from "since feeling is first"
"Without tenderness, we are in hell." -Adrienne Rich, "Twenty-One Love Poems X", from The Fact of a Doorframe
Selections from "A Scientist's Dozen" by Howard Young, from The NIH Catalyst.