Cris W. Barnes' Collection of Quotations

  ``The biggest poseurs at the APS meeting are the people from Princeton,  except for the graduate students who don't have the ideology down yet."
    ---D.M.

   ``If he thinks we are being critical, he should see us when we are hostile."
    ---Alan Ramsey

Barnes Law of VMS --- When in doubt, type HELP SET.

   ``Two things can happen when you build a research device.  It can not work, in which case you claim you need a bigger machine to make it work.  Or it can work, in which case you need a bigger machine."
   ---Bob Ellis

   ``Nothing TFTR is doing is relevant to CIT."
     ---C.S.
   ``Nothing CIT will do is relevant to ITER."
     ---Stewart Zweben

   ``That's a typical TFTR question, like which is the chicken or the cart."
     ---Rob Goldston

   ``We have now decided that the number one priority of the magnetic fusion program is the physics understanding of confinement in tokamaks. Personally, I never thought I'd see the day."
     ---Kim Molvig

   ``There has always been a coupling between the best physics and the best performance [in fusion research], with the physics making the performance possible."
     ---Harold Furth

   ``Does that mean that if you make it cheap enough, we can afford to fail?"
     ---Larry Johnson

   ``There is such a thing as a morally repugnant H-mode."
     ---Rob Goldston

   `` didn't think that fishbones were exciting until I saw them on my diagnostic."
     ---Stewart Zweben

   ``A necessary and sufficient condition for neutronics analyses to make accurate predictions of experimental results is that the experimental data must be available beforehand."
     ---Dan L. Jassby

   ``Experimentalists are much more sensitive to observe turbulence among theorists than in plasmas."
     ---Ron Stambaugh

   `` `It's great to be the King.'"
     ---Pat Diamond, quoting Mel Brooks, about Rebut

   ``In fusion, anytime you think you're right, you're usually wrong."
     ---Richard F. Post

   ``All proposed fusion schemes require at least one miracle to succeed. We should not criticize concepts for needing miracles, but rather judge them on the number and magnitude that are needed."
     ---Cris W. Barnes

   ``This is kind of technical for the average user."
     ---John Schivell
   ``That's what they said about TFTR."
     ---Dick Wieland

   ``In this context, user friendly means documented."
   ---Cliff Singer

   ``There's a difference between a plan and what you do."
     ---Jim Sinnis

   ``Modern physics is everything since you began reading Phys. Rev.  The history of physics is everything before then."
    ---Virginia Trimble

   ``For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.''
   ---Richard Feynman

  ``I consider that I understand an equation when I can predict the properties of its solution, without actually solving it.''
   ---P.A.M. Dirac

``Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.''
   ---Wittgenstein

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
   ---Dwight D. Eisenhower, quoted by Richard Nixon in "Six Crises".

``The staff shouldn't think the management is trying to hide anything by what they do.  It's just the management is incompetent.''
   ---Dorothy Barnes

  ``Management is the capacity to handle multiple problems, neutralize various constituencies, motivate personnel.... Leadership, on the other hand, is an essentially moral act, not---as in most management---an essentially protective act.  It is the assertion of a vision, not simply the exercise of a style.''
   ---Bartlett Giamatti

   ``To me, two activities are at the core of successful leadership.  The first is to decide what ought to be done.  A successful decision here is likely to be the result of correct inspiration, perception and vision.  The second is to carry the decision out.  Succeess in this process is likely to result from some combination of skill, talent, flair, articulateness and determination.  So leaders are engaged both in doing the right things and in doing things right."
     ---Henry C. Luce III

   ``To summarize what we have learned, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that we are at last putting serious effort and money into local observations.  Local observations are laborious and slow, but they are essential if we are ever to have an accurate picture of [nuclear weapons].  The bad news is that the [nuclear weapon] models on which so much effort is expended are unreliable because they still use fudge-factors rather than physics to represent important things like [...].    ... The bad news does not mean that [nuclear weapons] models are worthless.  They are ... essential tools for understanding [nuclear weapons].  They are not yet adequate tools for predicting [nuclear weapon performance].  If we persevere patiently with observing the real world and improving the models, the time will come when we are able both to understand and predict.  Until then, we must continue to warn the politicians and the public: don't believe the numbers just because they come out of a supercomputer."
     ---Freeman J. Dyson, writing in the May 1999 APS News about CLIMATE modeling; I have replaced the word "climate" appropriately above.

` ``But then...'' I ventured to remark, ``you are still far from the solution...''
   ``I am very close to one,'' William said, ``but I don't know which.''
   ``Therefore you don't have a single answer to your questions?''
   ``Adso, if I did I would teach theology in Paris.''
   ``In Paris do they always have the true answer?''
   ``Never,'' William said, ``but they are very sure of their errors.''
   ``And you,'' I said with childish impertinence, ``never commit errors?''
   ``Often,'' he answered. ``But instead of conceiving only one, I imagine many, so I become the slave of none.'' '
   ---Umberto Eco, ``The Name of the Rose''
 
 

April 30, 2002