William Shakespeare - Arthur Conan Doyle - Benjamin Cardozo - George Bernard Shaw - Herman Melville - John Dewey - Thomas Huxley - Robert Pirsig - Edward Hopper - Harold Chestnut -
Thou this be madness, yet there is method in ’t. William Shakespeare, Hamlet II ii 205, Polonius
You know my methods. Apply them. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four, 1890
Method is much, technique is much, but inspiration is even more. Benjamin Cardozo
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity. George Bernard Shaw
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method. Herman Melville
Imposing an alleged uniform general method upon everybody breeds mediocrity in all but the very exceptional. And measuring originality by deviation from the mass breeds eccentricity in them. John Dewey, Democracy and Education, Section 13: The Nature of Method, Method as General and as Individual, 1916
The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind. Thomas Huxley, Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature
Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best twenty-twenty hindsight. It’s good for seeing where you’ve been. It’s good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can’t tell you where you ought to go. Robert M Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974
Methods are transient: personality is enduring. Edward Hopper
The systems engineering method recognizes each system is an integrated whole even though composed of diverse, specialized structures and sub-functions. It further recognizes that any system has a number of objectives and that the balance between them may differ widely from system to system. The methods seek to optimize the overall system functions according to the weighted objectives and to achieve maximum compatibility of its parts. Harold Chestnut, Systems Engineering Tools