Chromatography Forum

Inspired by the topic "The "logic" of standards and guidelines" I suggest a topic on philosophical sayings. I'll start off with the following contribution.

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
-Les Brown

My version (for the pessimists).

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll float eternally in the endless void of space."
-Leonard Cook

We can actually be "local". I like this one from HW Mueller:

very quick and simple tests can give you a better result than deduction

http://www.sepsci.com/chromforum/viewto ... 6&start=15

Dragons in shallow water are the laughing stock of shrimps.

Peter

Actually this was just an adoption to the solubility problem of the German saying: "Probieren geht über Studieren". Liberal translation: Empiricism is preferable to theorizing.

One thing I never forgot was something from my teacher (In my words, I don´t remember his exact words): I always feel tired, whether I work or not, so I might as well work. (Stanley J. Cristol, U of Colorado, did my PhD under him).

My manager who is always the optimist, especially on my behalf, has a fantastic phrase " there are no problems, only opportunities"

My own homespun philosophy on forward planning is "always check there is paper before you sit down"

GCguy

I originally heard this from a golfer but adopted it when someone remarked that my method development had, by a stroke of luck, worked.

"Yes, and the longer I work in this field the luckier I seem to get"

I also like "Constants aren't, variables don't."

And do instruments have an empathy chip that senses when a job is really important and that the sample is the only 1mg in the world?


Ralph

This started out to be slogans, but became phrases I find myself repeating a lot, or hearing a lot. And apparently I'm in a pessimistic mood today.

"Failure to plan on your part, does not constitute an emergency on my part."

"Do you want it fast, or do you want it right?"

"My hovering over the GC ain't going to make it equilibrate any faster." (Too explain why I'm at my desk reading whilst someone does the I-gotta-pee dance about some sample.)

'Why do you only question my results when you don't like them?"

"Just because QA is the last step before shipment that doesn't mean we're the bottleneck."

"If we don't have time to do it right, what makes you think we'll have the time to do it over?"

From sales critters: "Don't worry--we'll make it up on volume."

Also from sales critters: "This is a one-time thing. I promise."

"Can we do it? Sure, we can do anything given enough time and money. But you're not going to give us any of either, are you?"

"If we don't have time to do it right, what makes you think we'll have the time to do it over?"

Thank you

pi3832,

I liked this one the best!

"My hovering over the GC ain't going to make it equilibrate any faster." (Too explain why I'm at my desk reading whilst someone does the I-gotta-pee dance about some sample.)

Posts like yours was what I had in mind when I started this thread. Thanks to all of the others for sharing their wisdom

skunked_once

And do instruments have an empathy chip that senses when a job is really important and that the sample is the only 1mg in the world?

lol! I think they do...it's called the "Murphy's Chip". Mine is partucualrly active on friday afternoons.

In the more general philosophical realm, I've always liked "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity"

This one came up during a discussion, so it may be original

"Science isn't an exact science" !!

Ralph

'Why do you only question my results when you don't like them?"

My theory about lab results is that the more confident you are about the results and the more you try to express that confidence, the more they are going to be questioned or ignored. Conversely, the less confidence you have in a result and the more you try to minimize the impact of that result, the more people think you came down from the mountain top with it written in stone tablets by the hand of God. There is probably a "Murphy's Law" that expresses this, also.

This one is one of my person favorites.. I got the idea for it from Woody Allen who said, Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right. I took that idea to the extreme and came up with this..

"It's only disgusting if you don't like it"

You'd be amased how often it fits into daily conversations..

When I try new methods / hardware whatever they sometimes work well first time, and then it takes me months to replicate the early promising results. This seems to happen too often to be random. Does it happen to anyone else ? Do we have an unrecognised law of the universe here ?

Peter

In response to Peters comment,
I worked as a chemist for many years before embracing the joy of analytical science, it is really incredible the number of times I tried reactions that worked only to find that nobody could repeat my work. Then when retrying the experiment myself I could not get it to repeat.

GCguy