Marash Boy: If you don't fail, you can't succeed Marash Girl: If you're afraid to fail, you can't succeed Thomas Edison (1847-1931), inventor of electricity: I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
The laconic dialogue between the boy and the girl of Marash reminds me of a similar koanic line, "If you try to fail and succeed, which did you just do? -- succeed? fail?" Perhaps, both. My second observation, however, is not a koan, but a fact: For Thomas Edison, the early advocate of "direct current system", it would have been intellectually honest had he added ONE more failure to his 10,000-ways-that-did-not-work resume. In another words, it was NOT Thomas', but Nikola Tesla's genius and greatest achievement of "alternating current system", which is today lighting the entire globe. I am not ripping Edison, but I am R.I.P.-ing Tesla, Requiescat in pace. That's how the story should rest.
re: marsh boy's comment: what if you succeed with the first attempt?
ReplyDeleteThe laconic dialogue between the boy and the girl of Marash reminds me of a similar koanic line, "If you try to fail and succeed, which did you just do? -- succeed? fail?" Perhaps, both.
ReplyDeleteMy second observation, however, is not a koan, but a fact: For Thomas Edison, the early advocate of "direct current system", it would have been intellectually honest had he added ONE more failure to his 10,000-ways-that-did-not-work resume. In another words, it was NOT Thomas', but Nikola Tesla's genius and greatest achievement of "alternating current system", which is today lighting the entire globe. I am not ripping Edison, but I am R.I.P.-ing Tesla, Requiescat in pace. That's how the story should rest.
only someone with sprezzatura could convince Edison of that. Sprezzatura indeed!
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