Martin L. Gross Quotes

The best way to figure out how something works is to try to build it from scratch.

For me, I'd rather be the inventive one, and if something doesn't work, I'll go back to the workshop, put it on the bench, and pound on it for awhile.

I learned quickly, as I tell my graduate students now, there are no answers in the back of the book when the equipment doesn't work or the measurements look strange.

Everyone is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure.

You need to make mistakes in rehearsal because that's how you find out what works and what doesn't.

Often I'll try things that just won't happen the way I'd like them to, so hearing that they're not working saves me some wear and tear the next time around.

Much can often be learned by the repetition under different conditions, even if the desired result is not obtained.

Most of the work performed by a development engineer results in failure.

Ideas do not always come in a flash but by diligent trial-and-error experiments that take time and thought.

Almost nothing works the first time it's attempted. Just because what you're doing does not seem to be working, doesn't mean it won't work. It just means that it might not work the way you're doing it.

I care not who forms the government of a country, so long as I control the purse strings.

You may think my business is to make appropriations, but it is not. It is to prevent their being made.

The sequester is stupidity on stilts.

Money can’t solve every problem, but it can solve quite a few.

Essentially, 'Z2' ended up feeling the way that it should, but it was through a considerable amount of trial and error that it took to get there.

When you're first starting a show, any show, you learn what works and what doesn't work, and it's a kind of trial and error thing.

When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions.

The process of debugging, going an correcting the program and then looking at the behavior, and then correcting it again, and finally iteratively getting it to a working program, is in fact, very close to learning about learning.

A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.

Don't take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give ~ with a few exceptions ~ generalize whatever they did. Don't over-analyze everything. I myself have been guilty of over-thinking problems. Just build things and find out if they work.

There's a host of difficult issues here, and that's why when you mentioned at the top of the show that the committees were looking at this, that's where I think we should be going.

Work hard and meticulously. When in trouble, look closely at a text that is a good example of what you're trying to do. And be patient.

If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.

That is the trouble with many inventors; they lack patience. They lack the willingness to work a thing out slowly and clearly and sharply in their mind, so that they can actually "feel it work." They want to try their first idea right off; and the result is they use up lots of money and lots of good material, only to find eventually that they are working in the wrong direction. We all make mistakes, and it is better to make them before we begin.

Nothing is really broke, so it's not like I can fix it. I just have to keep trying to find what I'm looking for.