"Harvey was not especially introspective, but this didn’t mean he was stupid. He was moral, within his lights; he understood the value of subtlety even if he wasn’t much for it himself, and one of the reasons he could get away with being loud and obnoxious was that he was a fair stick at strategy and logistics. Give him a job and he’d do it, usually in the most entropy-producing way possible, yes, but also in a way that achieved exactly the aim it was supposed to. One of Harvey’s guiding lights in terms of strategies was simplicity; all things being equal, Harvey preferred the course of action that let him get into the middle of things and then just buckle down. When asked about it, Harvey called it his Occam’s razor theory of combat: The simplest way of kicking someone’s ass was usually the correct one."
React to this quote
More by John Scalzi
See allResonant Thoughts
"Now it is a universal law of the perceptions obtained through the senses that we pay only so much attention to the sensations actually experienced as is sufficient for us to recognise external objects…"
"Power of auto-suggestion known in the Middle Ages. The power of thought, of idea, is incommensurable, is immeasurable. The world is dominated by thought. The human being individually is also entirely …"
Explore Further
Related Quotes
"The present book is my last contribution to the literature on what is known in India as “communalism”, mean…"
— Koenraad Elst"The reasons for persisting in Being seem less and less well founded, and our successors will find it easier…"
— Emil Cioran"The American people don’t expect government to solve every problem. They don’t expect those of us in this c…"
— Barack Obama"The practical activity of man had to lead his consciousness to the reptetition of various logical figures t…"
— Vladimir Lenin"It is not because I am better or worse than others, but because I understand all beings are equal."
— Richard Gombrich"There has always been a temptation to classify economic goods in clearly defined groups, about which a numb…"
— Alfred Marshall
Related Thinkers
Related Topics
Deep Dives
- Stephen King on philosophy
- Robert A. Heinlein on philosophy
- Ernest Hemingway on philosophy
- Mark Twain on philosophy
- George Bernard Shaw on philosophy
- Virginia Woolf on Philosophy
- Anton Chekhov on philosophy
- Ursula K. Le Guin on philosophy
- Stephen King on life
- Stephen King on time
- knowledge & Beauty
- knowledge & Change
