Models of My Life

If there are goals, they do not so much guide the search as emerge from it. It needs no summing up beyond the living of it.

He did know the difference between memorizing and understanding, and did not give up on a topic until he understood it clearly.

Bracketing satisficing with Darwinian may appear contradictory, for evolutionists sometimes talk about survival of the fittest. But in fact, natural selection only predicts that survivors will be fit enough, that is, fitter than their losing competitors; it postulates satisficing, not optimizing.

As long as I looked at the whole of Carnegie first, and its parts second, I could be useful. I think I have usually been able to do this, but I would be surprised if there have not been some lapses.

Teaching is not entertainment, but it is unlikely to be successful unless it is entertaining (the more respectable word would be interesting).

he had an unerring instinct for important (and difficult) problems.

In describing my life as mazelike, I do not mean that I have made a large number of deliberate, wrenching decisions to go off in one direction or another. On the contrary, I have made very few. Obvious responses to opportunities and circumstances, rather than studied decisions, have put me on the particular roads I have followed.

You start every class by giving students the opportunity (or better, the obligation) to ask questions about their reading, about previous sessions, or about anything. You take each question seriously, and answer it without making a jackass of the student who asked it (no matter how foolish the question).

To avoid constraining our ability to innovate, we did not seek national accreditation until our reputation was so well established that the accrediting body could not put pressure on us to conform to conventional ideas.