“It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future.”
William Gibson

“The information you have is not the information you want.
The information you want is not the information you need.
The information you need is not the information you can obtain.
The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay”

― Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

Bit busy today, so here’s a quick quote I picked up at TEDx in Barcelona. It’s a bit LA self-help, but I like it because it reminds me about purpose and passion.

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why” – Mark Twain.

The best thing by far about Barcelona, apart from being in Barcelona, was meeting an Englishman called Nic Marks. He is the guy behind the Happy Planet Index. Well worth checking out.

I’ve chosen this from today’s New York Times, but perhaps we could substitute weapons for politicians? (Remember the days when politicians had ideas?).

“We reached the point where weapons should go silent and ideas speak.” – Abdullah Ocalan (Kurdish rebel leader).

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
Albert Einstein

“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom one must observe.” Marilyn vos Savant in the Toronto Globe and Mail.

The main lesson of thirty-five years of AI research is that the hard problems are easy and the easy problems are hard. The mental abilities of a four-year-old that we take for granted – recognising a face, lifting a pencil, walking across a room, answering a question – in fact solve some of the hardest engineering problems ever conceived….As the new generation of intelligent devices appears, it will be the stock analysts and petrochemical engineers and parole board members who are in danger of being replaced by machines. The gardeners, receptionists, and cooks are secure in their jobs for decades to come.”

– Steven Pinker, psychologist, cognitive scientist and author

“There’s nothing quite as frightening as someone who knows they are right.”

– Michael Faraday.