A Quote by Linus Torvalds

Don't ever make the mistake [of thinking] that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit.
When things get bad enough, then something happens to correct the course. And it's for that reason that I speak about evolution as an error-making and an error-correcting process. And if we can be ever so much better - ever so much slightly better - at error correcting than at error making, then we'll make it.
You don't learn from a situation where you do something well. You enjoy it and you give yourself credit, but you don't really learn from that. You learn from trial and error, trial and error, all the time.
The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.
You can't ever work too much because there's no such thing as being in too good condition. You can't ever lift too many weights because you can't ever get too strong. You can't ever wrestle too much because you can always do better.
There's a price you pay for drinking too much, for eating too much sugar, smoking too much marijuana, using too much cocaine, or even drinking too much water. All those things can mess you up, especially, drinking too much L.A. water ... or Love Canal for that matter. But, if people had a better idea of what moderation is really all about, then some of these problems would ... If you use too much of something, your body's just gonna go the "Huh? ... Duh!"
Be ruthless in one important area: Yourself. Be ruthless about your commitment to Christ. Be ruthless about your intellectual growth. Be ruthless about finishing well. One of the biggest areas we should be ruthless about is our time. How much time do you spend complaining about your problems to people who can't help you solve them? How much time do you talk when you should be doing? When it comes to others, be gracious. But when it comes to you and your time, be ruthless.
I got better the way everyone gets better: by trial and error and error and error, by fumbling around and making mistakes but not giving up and working incredibly hard at it every day and eventually, through a painful and laborious process of eliminating every wrong turn, finding my way.
And learn that when you do make a mistake, you'll surface that mistake so you can get it corrected, rather than trying to hide it and bury it, and it becomes a much bigger mistake, and maybe a fatal mistake.
As soon as you make mistakes, or you have an off year, even if it's not your fault as a quarterback... I've always said the quarterback and the head coach always get too much blame when you lose and too much credit when you win.
I'm much more concerned about what artists think. But as you get older you tend to get much more isolated; you're not out in the bar, having long drunken arguments on the benefits of your work vs. someone else's. It's hard to know how people are looking at it, and you don't get much feedback. The written critical stuff seems to be the feedback, but that's hard to interpret.
The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It's not that there's something new in our way of thinking - it's that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.
One of the great rules of design is do something basic right. Then everything gets much more right of itself. But if you do something basic wrong - if you make what I call a Type 1 Error - you can get nothing else right.
You put pressure on yourself to go out and do better. And when you try to do too much, and you're thinking about it too much, it can throw your game off.
Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please, With too much spirit to be e'er at ease, With too much quickness ever to be taught, With too much thinking to have common thought: You purchase pain with all that joy can give, And die of nothing but a rage to live.
No one reads my books until they're finished because I don't want feedback. It confuses me, and it changes things; if I get too much feedback, I get thrown off my path.
I had to go through so much trial and error to get all the whack-ness out of my system as a kid. I think everybody has to do that. You have to go through a period of failing in order to get better at it - whatever you're doing.
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