Excellence

Blog post from 2013 on excellence.

Biases
Excellence
Identity
Quotations
Rationality
Author

Chetan Chawla

Published

August 7, 2013

Image credit: Bruce Warrington on Usplash

“We must learn to honor excellence in every socially accepted human activity, however humble the activity, and to scorn shoddiness, however exalted the activity. An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”

John Gardner, “Excellence”

PS: The beautiful pic above by Bruce Warrington shows the awesome plumbing inside a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird engine.