Peter Norvig's collection of quotes | Hacker News Reader

Peter Norvig's collection of quotes

norvig.com

63 pointsanuraggoel12 comments

  No art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it.
  
  - Leon Battista Alberti, (architect [1/3rd], painter [1/3rd] and mathematician [1/3rd, possibly less])

Does anyone else think Sergey Brin's quote doesn't quite 'fit in' with the rest of the list in terms of quotability?

"In the future, search engines should be as useful as HAL in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey--but hopefully they won't kill people."

Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it -- Richard Feynman

s/Science/Startup/

this is good, I want to use this as Nikil's application of to Feynman's metaphor for science to startups in my entrepreneurial quotes list. Can you please send me an appropriate attribution I can use.

I like this one...

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.

- Voltaire

I have seen Pasteur's quote frequently translated as "chance favors the prepared mind" but Norvig cites it as "chance favors only the prepared mind" which is closer to the original French and has a profoundly different meaning. It's certainly a stronger argument that a simple plan or clear hypothesis set will allow you to improvise more successfully as events unfold.

Am I the only one who doesn't see anything particularly special about Norvig's collection of quotes? Why do quotes that he likes hold any more relevance than someone else's? It's much better to build your own collection that is relevant to how you live your life.

One of my favorite quotes is by H. Skovoroda: "Merciful God for making the attainment of what is necessary easy, and for making everything that is hard to get unnecessary"

Ironic but I love this one,

A witty saying proves nothing. - Voltaire

He seems very fond of Douglas Adams.

Digital watches ARE a pretty neat idea!

I don't see any god up here.- Yuri Gagarin (in orbit, 1961)

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