Thought provoking quotes...

This is from the Business in Minnesota Newsletter from the University of MN Office of Business Relations. You can subscribe to the newsletter by going to the following web site: http://businessnewsumn.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/obr_footer.jpg?w=262&h=67

Words to work by: 10 quotes from across fields

Given the focus of this post, it seems appropriate to begin with a quote. This one is by New York Times bestselling author John Green: provoking

“Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we’re quoting.”

With that notion in mind, we asked University of Minnesota researchers from a variety of colleges and campuses to share a favorite quote related to their discipline. Take a look and click each researcher’s name to learn more about their work at the U of M…

William Goodman, associate professor, family social science:

“We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” ~the Talmud

Lucy Dunne, assistant professor and director, Apparel Design Program:

“I defy anyone to design a hat, coat or dress that hasn’t been done before. … The only new frontier left in fashion is the finding of new materials.” ~Paco Rabanne, Spanish fashion designer

Steven Miles, professor, medicine, Center for Bioethics:

“Sometimes the more measurable drives out the most important.” ~René Dubos, French-born American microbiologist

Pieranna Garavaso, professor, philosophy:

“The method of science fiction has its uses in philosophy, but … I wonder whether the limits of the method are properly heeded. To seek what is ‘logically required’ for sameness of person under unprecedented circumstances is to suggest that words have some logical force beyond what our past needs have invested them with.” ~W.V.O. Quine, American philosopher and logician

Deborah Swackhamer, co-director, Water Resources Center:

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” ~Loren Eiseley, American anthropologist

Lawrence Wackett, professor, biochemistry, molecular biology and biophysics:

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and poet

Alan Love, associate professor, philosophy:

“The most general maxim for those who study functionally organized systems is that we come to understand how things work by studying how, when and where they break down. … We learn more when things break down than when they work right. Cognitively speaking, we metabolize mistakes.” ~William C. Wimsatt, professor emeritus, philosophy, University of Chicago

Gibson Nene, assistant professor, economics:

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” ~Nelson Mandela, South African political leader

Kirsten Fischer, associate professor, history:

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.” ~Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, American historian and Harvard professor

Keith Brugger, professor, geology:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went — and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light

~Excerpt from “Darkness” by Lord Byron, British poet