Department of Computer Science

My Favourite Mottos

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Science and Technology

• Und so hat jedes grosse Ding sein Fundament im Kleinen - And thus each great thing has its fundaments in the small. Konrad Nix
• Amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic. Unknown
• Ideas are parasites in the minds of men. Paraphrased from Richard Dawkins
• In our times, banks are expected to take high risks for correspondingly uncertain outcomes. Scientists, on the other hand, are expected to accurately predict outcomes and minimize risks of their work. Shouldn't it be the other way round?
• The internet is like Hannibal Lecter: sometimes extremely informative, however, mostly manipulative, and always to be handled with utmost caution.
• My work always tried to unite the truth with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful. Hermann Weyl
• Applied science forms the hands of civilization. Foundational science is the eyesight of civilization. Thus, the advocates of replacing foundational science by applied science essentially suggest that by poking out ones eyes one will be able to concentrate on improving manual dexterity.
• I certainly concede that I am not always right but only in 90% of the cases. In fact, this statement is itself an example of how I sometimes get things wrong: for actually I am right in 95% of the cases.
• Wenn man einen Teelöffel Wein in ein Fass Jauche gibt, ist das Resultat Jauche. Wenn man einen Teelöffel Jauche in ein Fass Wein gibt, ist das Resultat ebenfalls Jauche - Schopenhauer's principle of entropy: putting a spoonful of wine into a barrel of manure will yield manure. A spoonful of manure into a barrel of wine will yield - manure. Arthur Schopenhauer

Mice and Men

• We are not that dumb and we are not that smart. Donald Keough (on being accused of a conspiracy)
• È quel ch'egli è - he is what he is. Giuseppe Verdi, Otello
• Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. Sir Francis Bacon
• I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. Sir Winston Churchill
• Overload 'em with information an' they'll kill yeh jus' to simplify things. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Everything else and the Universe

• Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
• Never ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence. Napoleon Bonaparte
• Television. A medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done. Ernie Kovacs
• Bad manners are infectious.
• Higher forms of life are only the result of bureaucracy imposed on bacteria. (You think this is a joke? Click here)
• In the last century, significant parts of the world have been dominated by the ideology that everyone should push the limits on intellect, but have the same limited income. In this century, we replaced this by the ideology that everyone should push the limits on income, but have the same limited intellect.
• Happiness is getting one's desires, one's abilities and one's actions to match.
• Do not do what you like; do what you want. Paraphrased from Michael Ende, The Unending Story
• Rubbish! (this is an in joke)
• In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director. Alfred Hitchcock
• vi may be the god of editors, but emacs is the editor of gods. Unknown

Feel free to correct me about mistakes or omissions in attribution.