I do enjoy good quotations, ones that convey great truths in a small number of words. I've decided to collect a few of my favourites here.
"Man's Search for Meaning" is one of the most remarkable books I've ever read, a book that draws, not just a positive message but the most positive message from what was humanity's worst episode - the Holocaust. Frankel's experiences in the concentration camps gave him a profound insight into what it means to be human.
We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that eveything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
Also:
What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who are being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
Finally:
Live life as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to do now.
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
We tend to always view problems in terms of our various ways of solving problems. We don't tend to view them on their own terms.
Models are not right or wrong; they are more or less useful.
Fowler is really arguing that the value in creating models of the world does not come from how correct they are but how useful they are. He gives the example of how Einsteinian mechanics are more correct than Newtonian mechanics, but often less useful because it is more difficult to understand and use (and not much more accurate in most common situations). In "Analysis Patterns", Fowler often presents a number of models of the same system, but suggests we work with the one that serves our goals best.
What I like about this quote is that it really questions how useful the correct/incorrect distinction is. Sometimes models like the ancient Chinese idea of energy ("chi") might seem to be not worth considering, but for many practitioners of chinese arts and medicine the model has practical value. The scientific "correctness" of the model is almost irrelevent.