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Smart things your educators have said

Harel13

Am Yisrael Chai
Staff member
Premium Member
As the title says, post smart things that your educators (teachers/professors) have said that have stuck with you.

I have one that one of my professors said last semester that has been in my head for some time now:
"You know it's a fair compromise if nobody is pleased."
 

Aštra’el

Aštara, Blade of Aštoreth
I remember the greatest human teacher I ever had.

I would tell her, “Thank you for everything you have taught me.” She would say, “I have taught you nothing. I have helped you unleash what was already there.”
 

Secret Chief

nirvana is samsara
As the title says, post smart things that your educators (teachers/professors) have said that have stuck with you.

I have one that one of my professors said last semester that has been in my head for some time now:
"You know it's a fair compromise if nobody is pleased."

The final words that the head teacher said to me were: Your physical strength is matched only by your mental strength. Set free the hurricane of power that surges through your body and cast aside the weaklings that would cling to you like frightened mice. Total belief in yourself will harness both the blinding light and the terrible darkness. Accept both and surge through the world like a mighty effluent.
 
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exchemist

Veteran Member
As the title says, post smart things that your educators (teachers/professors) have said that have stuck with you.

I have one that one of my professors said last semester that has been in my head for some time now:
"You know it's a fair compromise if nobody is pleased."
"This is one model", which was almost a catchphrase of my 6th form chemistry teacher, the man who inspired me to choose chemistry for my university degree. It is quite profound, gently reminding us at intervals that science is fundamentally in the business of model-building and not of definitive truth.

In fact this is especially true of chemistry, in which, due to the hideous complexity of real chemical systems, simplifications have to be used a lot. Sometimes more than one simplified model may be required for the same phenomenon, depending on which aspect you are concerned with, e.g. Valence Bond vs. Molecular Orbital theories of bonding, or things like the formalism of oxidation states, which pretend that everything is ionised, for the sake of balancing numbers, even though it is applied to covalent compounds.

More generally, "this is one model" has given me a useful sense of perspective on many things in life.

(By the way I have also found Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to be another philosophically useful idea, but that's another story.)
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
As the title says, post smart things that your educators (teachers/professors) have said that have stuck with you.

I have one that one of my professors said last semester that has been in my head for some time now:
"You know it's a fair compromise if nobody is pleased."
That could be (almost is) the motto of the BBC. ;)
 

Mark Charles Compton

Pineal Peruser
That could be (almost is) the motto of the BBC. ;)
When I say a version of the 'fairness' quote in the OP, I think I sound much more pessimistic, such as:

"How good is fairness and who wants it? Fair is when all parties involved are equally dissatisfied."

After all, we cannot make everyone happy, but we can certainly bring everyone down to the lowest common level.

More of such pessimism:
The glass is half empty. How do I know? 'If the liquid filling the glass doesn't evaporate, it's molecular structure is decaying. If we began at exactly half, entropy determines the glass to be half empty.' Better make of it what you can, while you still have it! :eek:
 

Harel13

Am Yisrael Chai
Staff member
Premium Member
That could be (almost is) the motto of the BBC. ;)
Ironically, the professor said it during a class on the start of the British Mandate, when the British were having meetings with the local Jews and Arabs.
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
The final words that the head teacher said to me were: Your physical strength is matched only by your mental strength. Set free the hurricane of power that surges through your body and cast aside the weaklings that would cling to you like frightened mice. Total belief in yourself will harness both the blinding light and the terrible darkness. Accept both and surge through the world like a mighty effluent.


Effluent ? :eek:
 
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