I have said that the modern man, and especially the modern American, however much 'know-how' he may have, has very little 'know-what'
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes a distinction between practical skills ('know-how') and deeper understanding or awareness ('know-what').
Norbert Wiener's quote highlights the contemporary challenge faced by individuals, particularly in America, where proficiency in technical skills ('know-how') often overshadows the necessary comprehension of broader concepts and meanings ('know-what'). This suggests a superficial engagement with knowledge, prompting reflection on the importance of cultivating deeper insights to foster more meaningful lives and contributions.
In practice
In a speech about education reform, this quote can be used to highlight the need for deeper learning.
In a very real sense, we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet, even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity.
The Advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.
Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.
We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves to exist in this new environment.
We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. _x000D_ A pattern is a message, and may be transmitted as a message.
Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.
What a mistake those who do not hope make! Judas made a huge blunder the day in which he sold Christ for 30 denarii, but he made an even bigger one when he thought that his sin was too great to be forgiven. No sin is too big: any wretchedness, however great, can always be enclosed in infinite mercy.
Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Even if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other side of the continent, we find the very same problem awaiting us when we arrive.
Money is like manure. It stinks when you pile it; it grows when you spread it
Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.
A Guru is there to show you what you are. You are not different from Me. Whatever I am, that is what you are.
I'm not interested in blind optimism, but I'm very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, 'This is not enough.'
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