01 April 2009

Post 193

A juxtaposition of two quotes:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” --Aristotle

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”--Einstein

I'm sure there's the potential for a connection there somewhere, but I'm not feeling clever enough right now to fabricate it.

3 comments:

  1. Do we really expect different results from habitual acts?

    I know I sure don't.

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  2. Well if you made it a syllogism it would go something like:

    1-- Excellence is a habit.
    2-- A habit is to do the same thing again and again (suppressed premise)
    3-- Insanity is to do the same thing and expect different results.
    4-- Insanity is a habit you expect different results from (from 2 and 3)

    Therefore:
    5) If you're excellent and you expect non-excellent results you're insane (1 and 4)

    If you're not excellent and you expect excellent results you're insane (negation of 5)

    So, I guess the take home message is if you're not excellent you should get used to it--or you're insane.

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