Do Quotes (10)
'Why,' said the Dodo, 'the best way to explain it is to do it.'
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1896), 40.
Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.
The Book of Business (1913), 95.
Environmentalists may get off on climate porn, but most people just turn away. 'If it was really so bad, they'd do something,' says one colleague, without specifying who 'they' are. The human tendency to convince yourself that everything is OK, because no one else is worried, is deeply ingrained.
'Wake up and smell the smoke of disaster', The Times (8 Nov 2007).
See also: | Bad (3) | Climate (14) | Colleague (4) | Convince (2) | Environmentalist (2) | Human (37) | People (10) | Tend (3) | Turn (4) | Worry (3)
It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.
Aphorism 6. Translation of Novum Organum, LXXXI. In Francis Bacon, James Spedding, The Works of Francis Bacon (1864), Vol. 8, 68.
Research is the art of seeing what everyone else has seen, and doing what no-one else has done.
In Barbara A. Nadel (ed.), Building Security (2004), 18.1. Compare quote by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi: 'Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.'
The end of knowledge is power ... the scope of all speculation is the performing of some action or thing to be done.
De Corp, EW, i, I, 1, 6, 7. In Jean Hampton, Hobbes and the social contract tradition (1988), 46. Hampton indicates that this quote is 'after Bacon' and in a footnote, that 'Hobbes was Bacon's secretary as a young man and had philosophical discussions with him (Aubrey 1898, 331).'
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
Spoken by Old Man in What is Man? In What is Man? and Other Essays (1917), 89.
See also: | Creature (15) | Fact (139) | Intellect (47) | Moral (11) | Proof (59) | Right (7) | Superiority (2) | Wrong (9)
The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
Widely quoted, but without citation, for example in Eve Herold, George Daley, Stem Cell Wars (2007), 79. If you know a primary source, please contact Webmaster.
Where should I start? Start from the statement of the problem. ... What can I do? Visualize the problem as a whole as clearly and as vividly as you can. ... What can I gain by doing so? You should understand the problem, familiarize yourself with it, impress its purpose on your mind.
How to Solve It: a New Aspect of Mathematical Method (1957), 33.
See also: | Design (12) | Experiment (199) | Gain (3) | Mind (116) | Problem (63) | Purpose (15) | Statement (4) | Understanding (94)
You may say organize, organize, organize; but there may be so much organization that it will interfere with the work to be done.
Speech, 'Municipal Corruption' (4 Jan 1901). In Gabriel Wells, Mark Twain's Speeches (1923), 218. In Mark Twain and Brian Collins (ed.), When in Doubt, Tell the Truth: and Other Quotations from Mark Twain (1996), 44.
