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“I asked a professor of nanotechnology what they use to measure the unthinkable small distances of nanospace? He said it was the nanometre. This didn't help me very much. A nanometre is a billionth of a metre. I understood the idea but couldn't visualise what it meant. I said, "What is it roughly?" He thought for a moment and said, "A nanometre is roughly the distance that a man's beard grows in one second". I had never thought about what beards do in a second but they must do something. It takes them all day to grow about a milllimetre. They don't leap out of your face at eight o'clock in the morning. Beards are slow, languid things and our language reflects this. We do not say "as quick as a beard" or "as fast as a bristle". We now have a way of grasping of how slow they are - about a nanometre a second.”
― Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative
― Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative
“Very many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of.”
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“For most of us the problem isn’t that we aim too high and fail - it’s just the opposite - we aim too low and succeed.”
― The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
― The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
Gary’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Gary’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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