1. Perfect numbers, like perfect people, are very rare.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) French philosopher and mathematician. !uoted in Mathematical Circles Squared (H. Eves; 1972)
2. The delusion that you’re perfect-or that if you just do the right thing, things will always work out OK-makes you resistant to change and fearful of failure…you’d rather not discover that you’re imperfect, that maybe what you were doing was wrong. The more people can go through discoveries that better.
Esther Dyson (b.1951) U.S. knowledge entrepreneur and government adviser. Interview, Reason Magazine (November 1996)
3. Perfection can be a fetish.
Bernard Leach (1887-1919) British potter. The Potter’s Challenge (1976)
4. Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.
- Northcote Parkinson (1909-93) British political scientist and author. Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress (1958)
5. The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection…is what alone gives a meaning to out life on this unavailing star.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) British essayist and critic. “Art and Letters,” Afterthoughts (1931)
6. An environment which calls for perfection is not likely to be easy. But aiming for it is always good for progress.
Thomas J. Watson, JR. (1914-93) U.S. C.E.O. of IBM. A Business and its Beliefs (1963)
