Margaret Wertheim Quotes

We tend to think of great thinkers and innovators as soloists, but the truth is that the greatest innovative thinking doesn't occur in a vacuum.

It's impossible for one person to think of everything.

Even Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, and Albert Einstein made serious mistakes. But the scientific enterprise arranges things so that teamwork prevails: What one of us, even the most brilliant among us, misses, another of us, even someone much less celebrated and capable, may detect and rectify.

A brilliant mind was never as clever as three average minds sniffing after something of interest.

Today, the solitary inventor has been over-shadowed by groups of scientists.

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds.

Some of my best thinking is done by others.

In science men have learned consciously to subordinate themselves to a common purpose without losing the individuality of their achievements. Each one knows that his work depends on that of his predecessors and colleagues, and that it can only reach its fruition through the work of his successors. In science men collaborate not because they are forced to by superior authority or because they blindly follow some chosen leader, but because they realize that only in this willing collaboration can each man find his goal.

No one is as smart as all of us.

Scientists contribute in a variety of ways and I don't think I can singular one even including [Albert] Einstein, that I can say that he's the best. We don't work like the best basketball player and the best musician and so on. Science is a collective effort.

We can arrive at better solutions to any problem or pain together, than we can by ourselves. The beauty of the modern age is that you are able to source answers, and sometimes the genius is in the combination of ideas and energy that does not reside in only one person.

I just enjoy collaborating. I think there is always something to be learned, and I think that one could never collaborate enough - that would be impossible. So I am always excited and honored when someone wants to work with me.

No one person, no one alliance, no one nation, no one of us is as smart as all of us thinking together.

Science is not like the Olympic Games or something where there's a lot of people all trying to win gold medals, and if you don't get a gold medal, you're nothing. There are actually a lot of people working together and contributing to the science - and the science is the important thing.

Two heads are better than one.

The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table.

Making Superman was so hard. We were a year over schedule. We were there a year and a half, the first time. And in a year and a half, you go through everything you go through in a life. So you can't really go, "Oh, it must have been fun to work with Chris Reeve." In a year and a half, you bonded like a family, so you know someone far too well to think something as simplistic as "Oh, it's just fun." You know their secrets. I mean, it was everything. It was truly - it's a cliché to say we were family, but we really were.

This is the funny thing about me. People think John just comes up with all the ideas. I'm honored. People think I have a big old brain, but actually I am the sum of the people I work with.

Intelligence will become more and more collective; innovation and order will become more and more bottom-up.

I don't remember what script it was, but at the Monday table read, the [opening] teaser didn't work.We went back and had to think of a new teaser, and [after] four hours, five hours, we weren't landing on anything.And it was probably Glen [Charles] who said, "What are we, cowards?" You had to do it, no matter how long it took.

None of us is as smart as all of us.

When you're in a room with twenty people who've all got the True Theory of the universe, it's difficult to know what to do. And the paradox is that so much important science is now being done by huge teams. With Higgs boson, for example, it's estimated there were around ten thousand scientists and engineers involved in building the machines that made this discovery possible.

If you choose to do both [acting and directing] on a set, than you're admitting that you understand that everyone is in it for the same goal and it's a collaborative experience. You can't really jump into being an actor, and than direct yourself. At some point, you have to be willing to accept other people's opinions. I think that's helpful. If you try to micro-manage and control all of it, than you're probably heading for disaster.

If you think backwards from a big problem, and you talk to all these other people who have skills and who think forward from their skills, it's very easy to form collaborations because everyone is incentivized to work together.

The day when the scientist, no matter how devoted, may make significant progress alone and without material help is past. This fact is most self-evident in our work. Instead of an attic with a few test tubes, bits of wire and odds and ends, the attack on the atomic nucleus has required the development and construction of great instruments on an engineering scale.