"A parable: A man was examining the construction……" — Richard Hamming
"A parable: A man was examining the construction of a cathedral. He asked a stone mason what he was doing chipping the stones, and the mason replied, "I am making stones." He asked a stone carver what he was doing. "I am carving a gargoyle." And so it went, each person said in detail what they were doing. Finally he came to an old woman who was sweeping the ground. She said. "I am helping build a cathedral." ...Most of the time each person is immersed in the details of one special part of the whole and does not think of how what they are doing relates to the larger picture."
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Richard Hamming
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33 Quotes by Richard Hamming
Richard Hamming has 33 quotes on this site.
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Good teachers deserve apples; great teachers deserve chocolate. A favorite quotation, written in calligraphy on his office door.
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He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to…
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If you don't work on important problems, it's not likely that you'll do important work.
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Perhaps the central problem we face in all of computer science is how we are to get to the situation…
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Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the…
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True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier-when it's spelled with a lower case letter.
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Science is concerned with what is possible while engineering is concerned with choosing, from among the many possible ways, one…
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It may be said "In research, if you know what you are doing, then you shouldn't be doing it." In…
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Mathematics is an interesting intellectual sport but it should not be allowed to stand in the way of obtaining sensible…
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When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did [Claude Elwood] Shannon in.…
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One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you…
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Science is composed of laws which were originally based on a small, carefully selected set of observations, often not very…
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