The real trick in highly reliable systems is somehow to achieve simultaneous centralization and decentralization.

Specifically, I would suggest that the effective organization is garrulous, clumsy, superstitious, hypocritical, monstrous, octopoid, wandering, and grouchy.

Your beliefs are cause maps that you impose on the world, after which you 'see' what you have already imposed.

Simply pushing harder within the old boundaries will not do.

Rank and expertise do not necessarily coincide.

If people have multiple identities and deal with multiple realities, why should we expect them to be ontological purists?

Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.

In every bush lies a nest.

Practical wisdom, " Aristotle told us, "is the combination of moral will and moral skill.

Trials and difficulties may assail the life of a believer, but they also have the ability to remold his character and banish from his life those impurities which might impair growth and service.

You do not need to solve problems, you just need to outgrow them.

It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

One can suffer a convulsion of one's entire nature, and, unless it makes some noise, no one notices. It's not just that we are incurious; we completely lack any sense of each other's existences.

A narrow Fellow in the Grass Occasionally rides

Teddy Roosevelt of course was a great outdoorsman all his life.

In some way they are all self-portraits, but I think I know what you mean by asking this - I would say, it is too idealistic to paint yourself.