Undo Quotes (4 quotes)
An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
From column 'Thoughts at Large,' Chicago Sun-Times. Quoted in Reader’s Digest (May 1979).
In most sciences one generation tears down what another has built, and what one has established, another undoes. In mathematics alone each generation adds a new storey to the old structure.
In Die Entwickelung der Mathematik in den letzten Jahrhunderten (1869), 34. As translated in Robert Édouard Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath’s Quotation-book (1914), 14. From the original German, “In den meisten Wissenschaften pflegt eine Generation das niederzureissen, was die andere gebaut, und was jene gesetzt, hebt diese auf. In der Mathematik allein setzt jede Generation ein neues Stockwerk auf den alten Unterbau.”
It’s the lies that undo us. It’s the lies we think we need to survive. When was the last time you told the truth?
Character in TV series, Homeland.
The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.
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