You can tell other people all the alibis you want. I don't mind. But to yourself try to be honest.
Interpretation
Being honest with oneself is crucial, regardless of what excuses one shares with others.
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-honesty. While it is easy to fabricate excuses or justifications to present to others, true integrity requires that one confronts their own truths and limitations without deception. Self-reflection and honesty with oneself lead to personal growth and authenticity.
In practice
During a motivational speech on personal growth, this quote can show the importance of self-honesty.
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.
The most important thing in life is to dare. The most complicated thing in life is to be afraid. The smartest thing in the world is to try to be a moral person.
What's encouraging about meditation is that, even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we're closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance.
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
Instead of jumping at the chance to be offended, choose to be amused. Rather than filling your thoughts with resentment, fill your heart with forgiveness.
Ignorance worships mystery; reason explains it; the one grovels, the other soars.
somehow, with the passage of time, and the dealines that life imposes, surrending became the right thing to do
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