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Time & hindsight

What counsel would you give your twenty-year-old self — and what should they ignore?

78 answers answered between 1930 and 2026

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Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Science and medicine 14 Arts and letters 10 Politics and public life 19 Business and finance 10 Technology 16 Sport 9
Read by age Any age Before thirty 3 In their thirties 9 In their forties 13 In their fifties 12 In their sixties 13 Seventy and beyond 19
Grace Hopper United States Navy rear admiral; computer scientist; co-designer of COBOL
Always remember that it's much easier to apologize than to get permission. In this world of computers, the best thing to do is to do it.
Recorded Lake Forest College, Chicago Tribune, 9 December 1982 (via Quote Investigator), 9 December 1982 source ↗
Marvin Minsky Cognitive scientist; co-founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
So any student who wants to get into psychology, right now the students are like lemmings. They say, “Well, it’s popular to study brain science, I’ll do that.” Or, “It’s popular to do neural networks; I see 30,000 people doing it, it must be good.” And my advice is if a lot of people are doing it, don’t waste your time.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 4 May 2001 source ↗

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