"Much of my work has come from being lazy."

Work

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Thematic Reflection

This quotation examines the core nature of Work as articulated by John Backus. Within historical and literary traditions, reflections on Work provide actionable mental models, challenging individuals to evaluate personal ethics, self-discipline, and daily actions.

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About John Backus

John Warner Backus was an American computer scientist. He led the team that invented and implemented FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language, and was the inventor of the Backus–Naur form (BNF), a widely used notation to define syntaxes of formal languages. He also contributed to the design of ALGOL, and later researched the function-level programming paradigm, presenting his findings in his influential 1977 Turing Award lecture "Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?"

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More by John Backus

"You need the willingness to fail all the time."

— John Backus
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"They don't like thinking in medical school. They memorize - that's all they want you to do. You must not think."

— John Backus
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More about Work

"I can deal with people who watch me on stage but I am not good in communicating with people any other way than through my work."

— Henry Rollins
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"When you're in a relationship you want it to work. My parents did, I did. But we are not taught how to make it work."

— Erykah Badu
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"We must work together to solve global challenges."

— Sergey Brin
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"America is sick and tired of spending hour upon hour sitting in their automobile trying to get to work, trying to get kids to school, trying to get to a doctor's appointment."

— Greg Abbott
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