I have said that the modern man, and especially the modern American, however much 'know-how' he may have, has very little 'know-what'
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes a distinction between practical skills ('know-how') and deeper understanding or awareness ('know-what').
Norbert Wiener's quote highlights the contemporary challenge faced by individuals, particularly in America, where proficiency in technical skills ('know-how') often overshadows the necessary comprehension of broader concepts and meanings ('know-what'). This suggests a superficial engagement with knowledge, prompting reflection on the importance of cultivating deeper insights to foster more meaningful lives and contributions.
In practice
In a speech about education reform, this quote can be used to highlight the need for deeper learning.
In a very real sense, we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet, even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity.
The Advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.
Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.
We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves to exist in this new environment.
We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. _x000D_ A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message.
Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.
Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.
Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it.
It is in the character of growth that we should learn from both pleasant and unpleasant experiences.
Don't fool yourself that you are going to have it all. You are not. Psychologically, having it all is not even a valid concept. The marvelous thing about human beings is that we are perpetually reaching for the stars. The more we have, the more we want. And for this reason, we never have it all.
The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.
The question the doubter does not ask is whether faith was really useless or simply not used. What would you think of a boy who gave up learning to ride a bicycle, complaining that he hurt himself because his bicycle stopped moving so he had no choice but to fall off? If he wanted to sit comfortably while remaining stationary, he should not have chosen a bicycle but a chair. Similarly faith must be put to use, or it will become useless.
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