In many spheres of human endeavor, from science to business to education to economic policy, good decisions depend on good measurement.

Quality is everyone's responsibility.

We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don't have anything like that.

Only those who have patience to do simple things perfectly ever acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.

In rating ease of description as very important, we are essentially asserting a belief in quantitative knowledge - a belief that most of the key questions in our world sooner or later demand answers to 'by how much?' rather than merely to 'in which direction?'

The research rat of the future allows experimentation without manipulation of the real world. This is the cutting edge of modeling technology.

Electrical science has revealed to us the true nature of light, has provided us with innumerable appliances and instruments of precision, and has thereby vastly added to the exactness of our knowledge.

The uncertainty principle refers to the degree of indeterminateness in the possible present knowledge of the simultaneous values of various quantities with which the quantum theory deals; it does not restrict, for example, the exactness of a position measurement alone or a velocity measurement alone.

Beautiful Evidence is about the theory and practice of analytical design.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Discipline is based on pride, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence. Discipline must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of the goal or the fear of failure.

Truth is exact correspondence with reality.

Clarity affords focus.

Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs - these are raised to the optimum point in the strictly bureaucratic administration.

Sometimes, surely, truth is closer to imagination or to intelligence, to love than to fact? To be accurate is not to be right.

There is nothing in the world more perfect than a slide rule. Its burnished aluminum feels cool against your lips, and if you hold it level to the light you can see God's most perfect right angle in each of its corners.

Nothing is more important to national security and the making and conduct of good policy than timely, accurate, and relevant intelligence. Nothing is more critical to accurate and relevant intelligence than independent analysis.

My preparation is about precision. It is a science.

In writing, I try to find the right balance between momentum and infinity, truth and beauty.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

Accuracy of statement is one of the first elements of truth; inaccuracy is a near kin to falsehood.

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God's business.

Hitting is an art, but not an exact science.

Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge.

Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.

The desire to economize time and mental effort in arithmetical computations, and to eliminate human liability to error is probably as old as the science of arithmetic itself.

Exactitude is not truth.

Science means constantly walking a tightrope between blind faith and curiosity; between expertise and creativity; between bias and openness; between experience and epiphany; between ambition and passion; and between arrogance and conviction - in short, between an old today and a new tomorrow.

In a few years, all great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals.

Knowledge born of the finest discrimination takes us to the farthest shore. It is intuitive, omniscient, and beyond all divisions of time and space.

There is no science in this world like physics. Nothing comes close to the precision with which physics enables you to understand the world around you. It's the laws of physics that allow us to say exactly what time the sun is going to rise. What time the eclipse is going to begin. What time the eclipse is going to end.

Perhaps one day we will have machines that can cope with approximate task descriptions, but in the meantime, we have to be very prissy about how we tell computers to do things.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

A discerning eye needs only a hint, and understatement leaves the imagination free to build its own elaborations.

Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.

True strength is delicate.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Trust in yourself. Your perceptions are often far more accurate than you are willing to believe.

Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.

Shoe design is like architecture - with the finest structure and tight, precise seams, it suits my obsessive neatness.

We measure very carefully what the positives are and I think it is less than one tenth of one percent, so we are very pleased with the accuracy of our biometric checks and we continue to monitor that.

I do a lot of work on computers, but I am so practiced in drawing that I can draw it full size, and you can take the measurements off my drawings. It's like drafting, but it's a work of art - a really beautiful drawing.

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.

It is relatively easy to design for the perfect cases, when everything goes right, or when all the information required is available in proper format.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.

But a science is exact to the extent that its method measures up to and is adequate to its object.

Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect, change is the way to perfect them.

Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.

Relying on nothing but scientific knowledge to produce an engineering solution is to invite frustration at best and failure at worst.

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.

Perfection is the child of time.

Computers were programmed to swap out error-prone, inconsistent human calculation with digital perfection.

Beauty: the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.

A good designer must rely on experience, on precise, logic thinking; and on pedantic exactness. No magic will do.

Without the element of uncertainty, the bringing off of even, the greatest business triumph would be dull, routine, and eminently unsatisfying.

All conventional wisdom has an element of truth to it, but good design requires more than an element of truth - it requires an ensemble of correct assumptions and valid calculations.

The true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth. Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth is likely to make a good guess at probabilities.

Rounding to the nearest cent is sufficiently accurate for practical purposes.

Neatness begets order; but from order to taste there is the same difference as from taste to genius, or from love to friendship.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

In designing hardware to be used every day, it was important to keep both the human aspects and the machine in mind. What looks good also often feels good.

Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature.

For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity.