Sublime

He is not an intellectual, but he is sincere and industrious in his search, and this is all that is required. He is also full of contradictions—he tries to be rational and moral, and then is overcome by passion and desire.

He was constantly worried that if the justices imposed their own social or political views, the authority of the court itself would be chipped away. His institutional conservatism left a permanent mark on me.

The Stoics identified the four virtues: courage, wisdom, justice, and temperance.

• Friendships of utility


• Friendships of pleasure


• Friendships of virtue

In my time as head of Vanguard, none of these standards and values was ever written down in a manual. Rather, I proposed a single overarching but simple rule: “Do what’s right. If you’re not sure, ask your boss.”

Engineers often have a particular mindset. The Los Alamos director J. Robert Oppenheimer was a highly principled man. But above all else he was a curiosity-driven problem solver.