Michael Nesmith Quotes

Snowden is an orderly thinker, with an engineer's approach to problem-solving.

Still, intuitive assumptions about behavior is only the starting point of systematic analysis, for alone they do not yield many interesting implications.

I'm a student of patterns. At heart, I'm a physicist. I look at everything in my life as trying to find the single equation, the theory of everything.

The proper study of mankind is the science of design.

Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.

We are not inferring design to account for a black box, but to account for an open box.

Physicists analyze systems. Web scientists, however, can create the systems.

But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.

My big thesis is that although the world looks messy and chaotic, if you translate it into the world of numbers and shapes, patterns emerge and you start to understand why things are the way they are.

I'm very left-brain.

For every job you require a kind of mindset. To be a teacher one should be knowledgeable. To be a software engineer you should know computer data system analysis, computer language etc. So, my mindset is not aligned with politics.

If you've got good systemising skills you can apply them to systems you aren't familiar with, and look for patterns.

I am convinced that this is the only means of advancing science, of clearing the mind from a confused heap of contradictory observations, that do but perplex and puzzle the Student, when he compares them, or misguide him if he gives himself up to their authority; but bringing them under one general head, can alone give rest and satisfaction to an inquisitive mind.

There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.

With method and logic one can accomplish anything.

The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to a significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built.

Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?

Science is not a body of facts. Science is a state of mind. It is a way of viewing the world, of facing reality square on but taking nothing on its face. It is about attacking a problem with the most manicured of claws and tearing it down into sensible, edible pieces.

The combination of threads, remote-procedure-call interfaces, and heavyweight object-oriented design is especially dangerous... if you are ever invited onto a project that is supposed to feature all three, fleeing in terror might well be an appropriate reaction.

Spend some effort in figuring out why each decision did or did not pan out. Doing that systematically is key: really try to question the way you make decisions, and improve it.

We are more easily led part by part to an understanding of the whole. -Facilius per partes in cognitionem totius adducimur

When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results.

The concept of logical thinking is selection and this is brought about by the processes of acceptance and rejection. Rejection is the basis of logical thinking.

If logic itself is created rather than being inborn, it follows that the first task of education is to form reasoning.

What is thinking? It is the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of the given facts or assumptions.