Thoughts
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Face the future with optimism. I believe we are standing on the threshold of a new era of growth, prosperity, and abundance. Barring a calamity or unexpected international crisis, I think the next few years will bring a resurgence in the economy as new discoveries are made in communication, medicine, energy, transportation, physics, computer technology, and other fields of endeavor.
Many of these discoveries, as in the past, will be the result of the Spirit whispering insights into and enlightening the minds of truth-seeking individuals. Many of these discoveries will be made for the purpose of helping to bring to pass the purposes and work of God and the quickening of the building of His kingdom on earth today. With these discoveries and advances will come new employment opportunities and prosperity for those who work hard and especially to those who strive to keep the commandments of God. This has been the case in other significant periods of national and international economic growth.
--Elder M. Russell Ballard
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He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.
--Leonardo da Vinci.
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We often miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.
--Thomas Edison
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If you can't solve your problem, solve an easier problem first.
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Don't sweat the small stuff (and its all small stuff)
--Robert Eliot
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
--Mark Twain
The best antidote I know for worry is work. The best medicine for despair is service.
The best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired.
--Gordon B. Hinckley
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Life
A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in,
A minute to smile and an hour to weep in,
A pint of joy to a peck of trouble,
And never a laugh, but the moans come double;
And that is life.
A crust and a corner that love makes precious,
With a smile to warm and the tears to refresh us;
And joy seems sweeter when cares come after,
And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter;
And that is life.
--Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)
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To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of two categories:
(1) things that need to be
fixed, and,
(2) things that will need to be fixed after you've had a few minutes to play with them.
Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.
Normal people don't understand this concept; they believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
--Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle
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Although designing structures at different scales has allowed us to design new materials, the challenge of the twenty-first century is to link up designed structures at all these scales into a macroscopic human-sized object. Although smartphones are an example of such integration, combining a macroscale touch-sensitive screen with nanoscale electronics, the possibility that whole objects might be wired up throughout, as if permeated by an entire nervous system, is now becoming conceivable. And if we can achieve this, then one day whole rooms, buildings, perhaps even bridges may generate their own energy, funnel it to where it is needed, detect damage, and self-heal. If this seems like science fiction, bear in mind that it is only what living materials do already.
--Mark Miodownik, Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World