“Lord only knows that there are enough problems yet to be
solved, books to be written, and music to be composed! Yet for all but a very
few, the path to these lies through the performance of perfunctory tasks which
in nine cases out of ten have no compelling reason to be performed. Heaven save
us from the first novels which are written because a young man desires the prestige
of being a novelist rather than because he has something to say! Heaven save us
likewise from the mathematical papers which are correct and elegant but without
body or spirit. Heaven save us above all from the snobbery which not only
admits the possibility of this thin and perfunctory work, but which cries out
in a spirit of shrinking arrogance against the competition of vigor and ideas,
wherever these may be found!”
The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, Norbert Wiener, pp. 134
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