He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important.
Interpretation
Being open to the world may lead to distractions, but it also offers valuable insights.
This quote suggests that while keeping one's door open can lead to frequent interruptions, it also allows for the reception of important information and insights about the world. Embracing openness may sometimes hinder focus, but it also nurtures awareness and understanding of what truly matters in life and work.
In practice
During a team meeting, to emphasize the value of openness to feedback and new ideas.
When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did [Claude Elwood] Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you.
Science is composed of laws which were originally based on a small, carefully selected set of observations, often not very accurately measured originally; but the laws have later been found to apply over much wider ranges of observations and much more accurately than the original data justified.
Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane.
If you don't work on important problems, it's not likely that you'll do important work.
Beware of finding what you're looking for._x000D_ _x000D_ A favorite aphorism he often used.
One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.
To err is to wander, and wandering is the way we discover the world; and, lost in thought, it is also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying, but in the end it is static, a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometimes even dangerous, but in the end it is a journey, and a story.
Emotions get in the way but they don't pay me to start crying at the loss of 269 lives. They pay me to put some perspective on the situation.
The Bible says today is the accepted time, today is the day of salvation... But there will come a time when it will be too late for you.
Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.
Patience attains All that it strives for. He who has God Finds he lacks nothing: God alone suffices.
Geniuses must never die, the progress of mankind depends on us
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.