Selected flexibility quotes

1. I wanted to be supportive of parents rather than to scold them. The book set out very deliberately to counteract some of the rigidities of pediatric tradition, particularly in infant feeding. It emphasized the importance of great differences between individual babies, of the need for flexibility and of the lack of necessity to worry constantly about spoiling.

2. Jeet Kune Do favors formlessness so that it can assume all forms and since Jeet Kune Do has no style, it can fit in with all styles. As a result, Jeet Kune Do utilizes all ways and is bound by none and, likewise, uses any techniques which serve its end.

3. All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

4. In combat, spontaneity rules; rote performance of technique perishes.

5. Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

6. Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.

7. I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.

8. The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.

9. The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

10. Better is to bow than break.

11. Perl has a long tradition of working around compilers.

12. Think of prototypes as a funny markup language--the interpretation is left up to the rendering engine.

13. I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

14. I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.

15. Fixed formation is bad. Study this well.

16. Of course I'm inconsistent! Only logicians and cretins are consistent!

17. Disneyland is like a piece of clay: If there is something I don't like, I'm not stuck with it. I can reshape and revamp.

18. 'A teacher is never too smart to learn from his pupils. But while runners differ, basic principles never change. So it's a matter of fitting your current practices to fit the event and the individual. See, what's good for you might not be worth a darn for the next guy.'

19. As an attorney, I assure you the law isn't a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather: the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it - very loose, the line of the law - so you can stretch it this way or that, rearrange the arc of it so you are nearly always - short of blatant theft or cold-blooded murder - safely on the right side. That's a daunting thing to realize but true.

20. The essayist ... can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter - philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast...

21. My peculiarity is that I don't have a particular style of investing or, more exactly, I try to change my style to fit the conditions.

22. The only routine with me is no routine at all.

23. The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas. Tolerant like the sky, all-pervading like sunlight, firm like a mountain, supple like a tree in the wind, he has no destination in view and makes use of anything life happens to bring his way.

24. Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesitate to make 10 ways to do something. :-)

25. Odd that we think definitions are definitive. :-)

26. Eutrapelia. 'A happy and gracious flexibility,' Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians...lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners.

27. If I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this upbringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up.

28. Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

29. Finally, a Jeet Kune Do man who says Jeet Kune Do is exclusively Jeet Kune Do is simply not with it. He is still hung up on his self-closing resistance, in this case anchored down to reactionary pattern, and naturally is still bound by another modified pattern and can move within its limits. He has not digested the simple fact that truth exists outside all molds; pattern and awareness is never exclusive.

30. Using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation.

31. The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation-or a relationship.

32. Religion asks questions about morals, whereas science just asks questions about the natural world. But when people try to use religion to address the natural world, science pushes back on it, and religion has to accommodate the results. Beliefs can be permanent, but beliefs can also be flexible. Personally, if I find out my belief is wrong, I change my mind. I think that's a good way to live.

33. Second is the Water book. With water as the basis, the spirit becomes like water. Water adopts the shape of its receptacle, it is sometimes a trickle and sometimes a wild sea. ... If you master the principles of sword-fencing, when you freely beat one man, you beat any man in the world. The spirit of defeating a man is the same for ten million men. ... The principle of strategy is having one thing, to know ten thousand things.

34. Generally, I dislike fixedness in both long swords and hands. Fixedness means a dead hand. Pliability is a living hand. You must bear this in mind.

35. The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor-not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies 'out there' in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.

36. When it comes to politics, one has to do as one [does] at sea with a sailing ship... reach one's course having regard to prevailing winds.

37. Go with the flow..

38. The techniques, though they play an important role in the early stage, should not be too restrictive, complex or mechanical. If we cling to them, we will become bound by their limitation. Remember, you are expressing the technique, and not doing Technique number two, Stance three, Section four?

39. My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every direction and finds pleasure in its swaying. Your thought is an ancient dogma that cannot change you nor can you change it. My thought is new, and it tests me and I test it morn and eve. You have your thought and I have mine.

40. I always consider raisins optional.

41. No vaya por generalidades en el vivir, si ya no fuere en favor de la virtud, ni intime leyes precisas al querer, que avra de bever manana del agua que desprecia hoi.

42. The combatant should be alive in sparring, throwing punches and kicks from all angles, and should not be a co-operative robot. Like water, sparring should be formless. Pour water into a cup, it becomes part of the cup. Pour it into a bottle; it becomes part of the bottle. Try to kick or punch it, it is resilient; clutch it and it will yield without hesitation. In fact, it will escape as pressure is being applied to it. How true it is that nothingness cannot be confined. The softest thing cannot be snapped.

43. The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

44. Seeing clearly within himself and always able to dodge around the ends of any position, including his own, Shaw assumed from the start the dual role of prophet and gadfly.

45. Well, fortunately, I am bilingual and I have really two cultures. So when you have that to draw on, you are able to write from one extreme to the other, or anywhere in-between. If you look at my discography, you will notice that one of my favorite albums is 'Gloria!', which is totally dance-oriented, with very sensual lyrics; and then there's 'Mi Tierra which is totoally roots-oriented and really promoted our culture worldwide through music, and that's important for me and also for people of Cuba to know that even though we were in exile and I grew up in the States, our culture and our music are very much a part of my life.

46. At each stage I reach a balance, a conclusion. At the next sitting, if I find that there is a weakness in the whole, I make my way back into the picture by means of the weakness - I re-enter through the breach - and I reconceive the whole. Thus everything becomes fluid again.

47. Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri, quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes.

48. Mostly, filmmakers complain that they must work against muddled or moving boundaries. And parents' groups grouse about 'ratings creep,' a perceived tendency for a category like PG-13 to permit ever more violence, sex and profanity over the years to reach impressionable youth. Yet it was Mr. Valenti's genius to have devised an apparatus that is not bound by precedent, changes its definitions at will and, ultimately, serves the motion picture industry by becoming, at any given moment, as permissive or restrictive as the prevailing climate seems to demand... for nearly 40 years, Mr. Valenti's raters have largely kept politicians and busybodies out of the film business, even if that meant playing somewhat unpredictable busybodies themselves. They haven't always been fair, and not entirely pleasant to deal with. But in the end, theirs was no mean achievement.

49. He must be a born leader or misleader of men, or must have been sent into the world unfurnished with that modulating and restraining balance - wheel which we call a sense of humor, who, in old age, has as strong a confidence in his opinions and in the necessity of bringing the universe into conformity with them as he had in youth. In a world the very condition of whose being is that it should be in perpetual flux, where all seems mirage, and the one abiding thing is the effort to distinguish realities from appearances, the elderly man must be indeed of a singularly tough and valid fibre who is certain that he has any clarified residuum of experience, any assured verdict of reflection, that deserves to be called an opinion, or who, even if he had, feels that he is justified in holding mankind by the button while he is expounding it.

50. I never did understand the resentment about Country artists 'going pop'. Either you've got what it takes to appeal to a whole lot of people, or you don't.

51. See those trees Bend in the wind I feel they've got a lot more sense than me You see I try to resist...

52. A true traveller has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving.

53. Of course, this being Perl, we could always take both approaches. :-)

54. I already have too much problem with people thinking the efficiency of a perl construct is related to its length. On the other hand, I'm perfectly capable of changing my mind next week... :-)

55. Interestingly enough, since subroutine declarations can come anywhere, you wouldn't have to put BEGIN {} at the beginning, nor END {} at the end. Interesting, no? I wonder if Henry would like it. :-)

56. Which mindset is right? Mine, of course. People who disagree with me are by definition crazy. (Until I change my mind, when they can suddenly become upstanding citizens. I'm flexible, and not black-and-white.)

57. Concepts are a provisional affair. (1951)

58. 'To renew' applies when we are fighting with the enemy, and an entangled spirit arises where there is no possible resolution. We must abandon our efforts, think of the situation in a fresh spirit then win in the new rhythm. To renew, when we are deadlocked with the enemy, means that without changing our circumstance we change our spirit and win through a different technique.

59. Your strategy is of no account if when called on to fight in a confined space your heart is inclined to the long sword, or if you are in a house armed only with your companion sword. Besides, some men have not the strength of others. In my doctrine, I dislike preconceived, narrow spirit. You must study this well.

60. Then I'll tell the truth. We're allowed to do that in emergencies. We can't plan for everything, you know.

61. I made this big statement saying, 'I've left The Libertines.' A couple of people said, 'You can't do that! You're such a great band! What are you gonna do about Brixton?' And some people said, 'Well, I'd rather be here than Brixton.' There's no reason you can't do both. If I was 16 or 17 and Morrissey opened his front door to me and let me go and listen to him and chat to him it would be a joy. Why not? It's possible. I don't really have that much else going on in my life.

62. Whoever in his public services is handcuffed and shackled by the vice of consistency will be a man not free to act as various questions come before him from time to time; he will be a statesman locked in a prison house, keys to which are in the keeping of days and events that are dead. Let me quote Emerson: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen.'

63. Emilio and I like projects to breathe and grow. We started with a concept -- write songs, make demos, then let the guest stars listen to them and then afffect the writing process. For Jose Feliciano, I had written a chorus and a bit of a melody. He started playing the chorus and ad-libbing. I went, 'This is the [stuff]! Forget my melody!' Carlos Santana worked just the other way. He wanted me to record a plished take singing first, so his playing could recreate my emotion. I got goose bumps [writing '90 Millas']. Like in 'Esperando,' which is addressed to Cubans on the island. Those of us in America, we're like the bogeyman, but I wanted Cubans at home to know: Whatever happened doesn't matter. The future is for us to heal. Adn also: because we're here, we latched onto any part of our culture. Yes and no [this is a political record]. Politics is life, so yes. but it's not specific. Saying that 90 miles haven't divided us sends a message about freedom for Cuba -- and for everyone.

64. It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word.

65. It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.

66. It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.

67. To have defined and sure opinions, fixed and known instincts, passions and character -- all that is the horror of turning our soul into a fact, materialize it and make it external.

68. Il arrive quelquefois des accidents dans la vie d'ou il faut etre un peu fou pour se bien tirer.

69. I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.

70. Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.

71. Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.

72. We might plan a trip to London. Then it is a sunny day and we want to stay at home.

73. What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities.

74. You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.

75. Man is the animal that draws lines which he himself then stumbles over. In the whole pattern of civilization there have been two tendencies, one toward straight lines and rectangular patterns and one toward circular lines. There are reasons, mechanical and psychological, for both tendencies. Things made with straight lines fit well together and save space. And we can move easily - physically or mentally - around things made with round lines. But we are in a straitjacket, having to accept one or the other, when often some intermediate form would be better.

76. It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.

77. Film composing is a splendid discipline, and I recommend a course of it to all composition teachers whose pupils are apt to be dawdling in their ideas, or whose every bar is sacred and must not be cut or altered.

78. The way that helps will not be the same; it changes according to the situation.

79. I hate definitions.