Arthur Conan Doyle
- Watson on Holmes
My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
- Sherlock Holmes on using the brain
I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose... the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order... It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
Levitt, Dubner
- Incentives
The typical economist believes that the world has not yet invented a problem that he cannot fix if given a free hand to design the proper incentive scheme... An incentive is a bullet, a lever, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation.
Shakespeare
- Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
