User:WCCasey

Welcome to my user page. I've been editing and creating new articles since mid-2009. Primary interests include history (esp. Roman, British and U.S.A./California), biography, historical fiction, futurism and architecture. I can sometimes be obsessive about spelling (not, however, one of those who replace British spellings with American or vice versa), grammar, syntax and punctuation. All comments are welcome on my Talk page.

Favorite quotes. Since one of my main interests is history, the list begins with a few about history:

• "We learn from history that we learn nothing from history." - George Bernard Shaw (paraphrase of Hegel)
• “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” – Mark Twain
• "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana
• "You either have to be part of the solution, or you're going to be part of the problem." - Eldridge Cleaver
• "The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know", and...
• "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." - Albert Einstein
• "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." (The best [or perfect] is the enemy of the good) - Voltaire
• "Life must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards" - Kierkegaard
• "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (The more things change, the more they stay the same) - Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr
• "When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision." - Lord Falkland
• "It ain’t what you don’t know that hurts you, it’s what you don’t know you don’t know." - Mark Twain
• "We have met the enemy, and he is us" - Pogo
• “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” - Robert J. Hanlon
• "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there" - Lewis Carroll
• "Progress includes Order, but Order does not include Progress." John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (1861)
• "To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child." - Cicero
• "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.” Benjamin Franklin

I'll add this one; not because I'm a mathematician but because I'm mysteriously attracted to aphorisms couched in this form:

• “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” - Albert Einstein

Favorite rebuttal of a logical fallacy:

• "Correlation does not imply causation"