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It's a parody, of course -- but that quote isn't necessarily bad. Tomas Jefferson is attributed with a similar one: "If you want something you’ve never had, you
by gkoberger 13y ago
It's a parody, of course -- but that quote isn't necessarily bad. Tomas Jefferson is attributed with a similar one: "If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done."
A lot of the innovative companies we know did things that defied common sense. (And of course, there's a lot of companies we'll never hear of because they ignored common sense.) So, it's a case-by-case thing.
- solistice 13y agoWell, you innovate by ignoring common sense, but by keeping by your senses. There was a time when people believed that the human body wasn't designed to go faster than 20 miles per hour. Some crazy people disproved them. We're still on the side of those crazy people, and we're doing even crazier speeds than they proposed.
- cabalamat 13y ago> that quote isn't necessarily bad Indeed. If you're using sense that is common to everyone, then 7 billion other people will have potentially thought of it before you. Original ideas imply uncommon sense.
- marcusf 13y agoContrasted with a favourite from Stephen Fry: "An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them."
- goodcanadian 13y agoI like that . . . However, I think there may be some truth to it. There are plenty of good ideas that aren't in anyway new, but for some reason have been forgotten or ignored. Sometimes, it is because the technology wasn't ready, but there can be a myriad of reasons. It is often worth perusing old magazines and journals for new insights.
- neilk 13y agoThere is no record of Thomas Jefferson ever saying that. http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/if-you-want-something-you-have-never-had-quotation http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/if-y... Improperly attributed quotations are a bit of pet peeve of mine. I don't want to beat anybody up if they just read it on the web somewhere. But the problem is, anybody even slightly familiar with Jefferson would know he would never say anything like that.
- nsxwolf 13y agoApparently Thomas Jefferson never said anything notable to popular sensibilities. I don't often encounter a quote that goes unchallenged. He seems to be a composite phantom made of misattributed quotations.
- JosephHatfield 13y agoAccording to that Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, more than half the quotes commonly attributed to Thomas Jefferson are, in fact, spurious.
- gkoberger 13y agoAgreed; which is why I made sure to say it was attributed to him (not that he actually said it).
- neilk 13y agoSorry. I was being pedantic.
- Raffaelo 13y ago"The problem with quotes on the Internet is: You never know if they´re accurate!" - Mahatma Ghandi I´ve actually seen this one attributed to Napolean Bonaparte and John Lennon as well...
- txutxu 13y agoAlso, you can innovate using _loads_ of common sense, uncommon loads, to the point that something evident and simple, wasn't created before by anybody. Also, I would like to point, that it's not the same "common sense" what a developer, who is some years in a university and techie environment, specialised on a few difficult technologies, than the "common sense" of a "final user" which does not care about technology quirks, code conventions, pre-existing tools, related news feeds, etc.