{"id":2260,"date":"2016-08-15T10:42:08","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T14:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/?p=2260"},"modified":"2016-08-15T10:42:08","modified_gmt":"2016-08-15T14:42:08","slug":"monday-morning-insight-finding-out-what-we-dont-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/monday-morning-insight-finding-out-what-we-dont-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Morning Insight: Finding Out What We Don’t Know"},"content":{"rendered":"
(Another in the continuing series of quotes to start the week<\/a>.)<\/em><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today is Napoleon Bonaparte’s birthday (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), so you might expect that I would discuss a Napoleonic quote. I could — he has a plethora of quotes including a phrase I use rather a lot (“From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step,” he said) — but Napoleon was kind of a jerk. Sure, he sold us Louisiana and a whole lot more, and he was a skilled military commander, but this week’s quote comes from the commander who bested him at Waterloo: the Duke of Wellington.<\/p>\n

In addition to being a celebrated military leader in sixty different battles, Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852), was a Member of Parliament and twice Prime Minister of Britain. I think one of his most interesting quotes is<\/p>\n

All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called “guessing what was at the other side of the hill.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Hill\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What’s on the other side? (Image: “Hill,” by Henry Burrows, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)<\/em><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

I like that because so much of what we do, and so many decisions we make in our lives, are based on our guesses about conditions that we aren’t sure of — what’s on “the other side of the hill” — combined with our predictions of what will happen if we take this action or that. According to Theory of Knowledge, we test our guesses and predictions against experience and thereby prepare ourselves for the next decisions we must make, and the next, and so on.<\/p>\n

So, whatever decisions you have to make and whatever unknowns you face, may all your guesses be accurate, your predictions sound, and your courage strong.<\/p>\n

Have a great week!<\/p>\n

___
\nP.S. As for the quote itself, I found it in a number of different places but the attribution seemed odd. It was twice dated 10 days before the Duke’s death, yet once it was referred to as being included in a book covering an earlier period of his life. That’s a bit of a mystery, but I still like the quote.<\/em><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Another in the continuing series of quotes to start the week.)   Today is Napoleon Bonaparte’s birthday (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), so you might expect that I would discuss a Napoleonic quote. I could — he has a plethora of quotes including a phrase I use rather \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[444,447],"class_list":["post-2260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","tag-quotes","tag-theory-of-knowledge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2261,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260\/revisions\/2261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}