Joaquim Barbosa Quotes

“I have a temperament that doesn't adapt well to politics. It's because I speak my mind so much.”

“I think my legacy will be in what most people don't like about me: my style - the separation between judge and lawyers, judge and politics, the real independence of the judiciary from the executive, from the legislative, from money. I'm criticized in Brazil because of that. In the end, I hope to prevail.”

“Its very beautiful over there. I dont know where there is, but I believe its somewhere, and I hope its beautiful.”

“We fear what we don’t know, or whatever seems like a mystery to us.”

“The truth is the object of our lustBut the light is still so very dim…”

“May be able to die those who didn't know how to live”

“If he [Thomas Edison] had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. … Just a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.”

“The recurrence of a phenomenon like [Thomas] Edison is not very likely. The profound change of conditions and the ever increasing necessity of theoretical training would seem to make it impossible. He will occupy a unique and exalted position in the history of his native land, which might well be proud of his great genius and undying achievements in the interest of humanity.”

“I came from Paris in the Spring of 1884, and was brought in intimate contact with him [Thomas Edison]. We experimented day and night, holidays not excepted. His existence was made up of alternate periods of work and sleep in the laboratory. He had no hobby, cared for no sport or amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene. There can be no doubt that, if he had not married later a woman of exceptional intelligence, who made it the one object of her life to preserve him, he would have died many years ago from consequences of sheer neglect. So great and uncontrollable was his passion for work.”

“Edison was by far the most successful and, probably, the last exponent of the purely empirical method of investigation. Everything he achieved was the result of persistent trials and experiments often performed at random but always attesting extraordinary vigor and resource. Starting from a few known elements, he would make their combinations and permutations, tabulate them and run through the whole list, completing test after test with incredible rapidity until he obtained a clue. His mind was dominated by one idea, to leave no stone unturned, to exhaust every possibility.”