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Tinkering Quotes

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Tinkering Quotes

“Like most visionary utopias, though. IDN (Integrated Data Network) was never to be. Perhaps it was simply too ambitious a project: infrastructures seldom respond to a single vision or a master plan, as Paul Edwards (2010) writes, and conjuring up a platform that would serve the entire marketplace was an almost Quixotic task. Infrastructures emerge not through planning and calculated foresight, but through the meandering paths of history, in the mangle of making, tinkering, and wrestling with the obduracy of organizations, practices, and their installed base. The system eventually introduced for Big Bang reflected this fragility and contingency of infrastructures: it was the creative result of reshaping legacy devices into a system that did the job for the time being. A band-aid. A product of creative, recombinant bricolage.”

FinanceContingencyAutomationTinkeringBricolage
Book:Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets
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“The more you tinker, the easier it becomes. You get used to remixing and improving your projects. You do research and get excited about what to try next. You get inspired by other people’s work. You might fall in love with an idea or get obsessed with finding the answer to a question. You’ll discover you don’t know all the answers.”

InspirationResearchDiscoveryQuestionsTinkeringRemixing
Book:The Tinkering Workshop: Explore, Invent & Build with Everyday Materials; 100 Hands-On STEAM Projects
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“Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.”

ThinkingNeedsGivingShouldWritingLittlesDoeMomentsAsksFoundVoiceCan DoNaturalAdviceProveRhythmTinkering
Author:Jorge Luis Borges
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“There is fascism, leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its symbol, into smartness and yapping out of orders, and self-righteous brutality, into social as well as international war. It means change without hope. Our immediate duty - in that tinkering which is the only useful form of action in our leaky old tub - our immediate duty is to stop it.”

WellsMeanWarSelfActionFormOrderSocialDutyInternationalChosenSymbolsFascismRighteousBrutalityBlacknessWithout HopeSelf RighteousTubsSmartnessTinkering
Author:E. M. Forster
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“I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill.”

PeopleGivingReasonLuckySkillsErrorsRewardsTrialsThanksFollowersAggressiveDisagreeAdamFree MarketIncentivesTrial And ErrorTinkeringBlack Swan
Book:The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility
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“Our problems are both acute and chronic, yet all we hear from those in positions of leadership are the same tired proposals for more government tinkering, more meddling and more control---all of which led us to this state in the first place... We must have the clarity of vision to see the difference between what is essential and what is merely desirable, and then the courage to bring our government back under control and make it acceptable to the people.”

PeopleFirstsStatesProblemGovernmentDifferencesVisionPositionEssentialsTiredClarityAcceptableDesirableProposalMeddlingTinkeringClarity Of Vision
Author:Ronald Reagan
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“By all odds, earliest man, so naked to the elements and to deadly enemies, should have existed in a state of constant shock. We find him instead the only lighthearted being in a deadly serious universe.... He alone, with childish carelessness, tinkered and played, and exerted himself more in the pursuit of superfluities than of necessities. Yet the tinkering and playing, and the fascination with the nonessential, were a chief source of the inventiveness which enabled man to prevail over better-equipped and more-purposeful animals.”

MenShouldStatesUniverseAnimalEnemySeriousSourceElementsShould HaveConstantPursuitNakedChiefsShockOddsFascinationCarelessnessInventivenessTinkering
Author:Eric Hoffer
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“By sending the contradictory message that the famous are just plain folks on Mount Olympus, America has forged a relentless tension between loftiness and accessibility. Stir in the fact that the inborn talent and intelligence needed to achieve fame are immune to distributive tinkering by government programs and you have a definition of fame certain to produce envious rage: somebody screwed democracy.”

FactsGovernmentAmericaCertainDemocracyAchieveTalentProduceNeededFameMessagesProgramFolksDefinitionsEqualityEnvyRageTensionContradictoryRelentlessImmuneEnviousForgedAccessibilityGovernment ProgramsOlympusTinkering
Author:Florence King
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“Every time my cameras go out on a movie, we learn something new and then we take what we learn and we put it into the next generation of the cameras so we're constantly improving. It's kind of like building a race car, racing it, then running back to the shop and working on the engine some more and tinkering with it to improve it.”

KindRunningNextRaceGenerationsCarBuildingCamerasShopsSomething NewRacingEnginesImprovingNext GenerationRace CarRunning BackCar RacingTinkeringConstantly Improving
Author:James Cameron
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“I think I was also afraid of the novel. I write line by line, proceeding at snail's pace, rewriting as I go and paring the excess away. This is against all the best advice for writing long form prose, and I have tried over the years to break myself of the habit, but I can't bear to leave anything ungainly on the page and half the fun for me is that tinkering. So the length of a novel was a daunting prospect.”

ThinkingWritingYearsLongI CanFormFunLinesHalfBreakNovelAdviceBearsHabitPagesProseLengthPaceExcessProceedingBest AdviceAll The BestRewritingSnailTinkering
Author:Debra Dean
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“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

IfsMenFirstsWholeLastsCoursesAnimalLandIgnoranceFoolBuiltIntelligentPlantUselessWheelsMechanismLast WordsPrecautionCogsTinkeringLand Conservation
Book:Round River
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“A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was a tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect, he becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all‐knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified.”

IfsWorldHumansDifferentSelfUniverseCausesCreativityKnowingAtheismEffectsEgoMachinesMereAtheistAbsurdRelateRejectsControlledTyrantsDictatorAgnosticJustifiedOmnipotentHuman FreedomThere Being No GodCogsTinkering
Author:Karen Armstrong
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“Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God, we do not see ourselves - blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One.”

MenLooksRealSoulEyePerfectPayAttentionFrontsObjectsBlessedReliefTinkeringRepeated FailurePerfect OneRiddance
Author:Aiden Wilson Tozer
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“Basement?' Hamish cried, then glanced at his brother. 'You hear this fellow? He thinks we can just go on down to the furnace and start tinkering?' Angus laughed. 'He probably wouldn't care at all if the whole place went boom, he wouldn't.' At this the guard bristled and stood up even straighter. 'Now see here---' 'No, you see, my good man. Out here, see, we've got snow. So in there, I'd bet, you've got heat. And where there's heat there's gas; and where there's gas there's...' Angus trailed off while his brother said, 'boom.”

IfsThinkingMenSaidWholeCareBrotherGoes OnFellowsSnowHeatGasGood ManLaughedCriedBasementsStood UpFurnacesTinkering
Author:Ally Carter
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“I began by tinkering around with some old tunes I knew. Then, just to try something different, I set to putting some music to the rhythm that I used in jerking ice-cream sodas at the Poodle Dog. I fooled around with the tune more and more until at last, lo and behold, I had completed my first piece of finished music.”

TryingFirstsDifferentLastsUsedCreativityPiecesDogInnovationFinishedRhythmIceTunesCreative ProcessCreamBe CreativeIce CreamFooledSodaPoodlesInspire CreativityPoodle DogsTinkeringCream Soda
Author:Duke Ellington
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“Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.”

MatterChanceOriginalityIdleDissatisfactionTinkeringUntalented
Book:Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
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“The Unexpected stalks a farm in big boots like a vagrant bent on havoc. Not every farmer is an inventor, but the good ones have the seeds of invention within them. Economy and efficiency move their relentless tinkering and yet the real motive often seems to be aesthetic. The mind that first designed a cutter bar is not far different from a mind that can take the intractable steel of an outsized sickle blade and make it hum in the end. The question is how to reduce the simplicity that constitutes a problem ("It's simple; it's broke.") to the greater simplicity that constitutes a solution.”

MindFirstsDifferentRealEndsProblemBigsSeemsMovingScienceSimpleEconomyGreaterSolutionsSimplicitySeedsBarsInventionBrokeMotiveUnexpectedFarmsFarmersAestheticBootsEfficiencySteelBentBladesInventorRelentlessStalkingHavocCuttersTinkeringVagrants
Author:Verlyn Klinkenborg
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“Works of art are not so much finished as abandoned. Perhaps poems can be perfect. A short-short story might even be perfectible, as effective and enjoyable for one reader as the next. But novels and other book-length narratives are great rambling things that always contain some flaws. For works of any length, there comes a point when your continued tinkering won't improve the whole, but will just trade one set of problems for another.”

ArtBookWholeStoriesProblemMightNextPerfectNovelReaderTradeFinishedNarrativeLengthFlawsWorks Of ArtShort StoryAbandonedEnjoyableTinkeringRambling
Author:Bruce Holland Rogers
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