
What is the shortest and generally most useful bit of wisdom you know? - kareemm
http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-useful-shortest-and-most-generally-applicable-piece-of-wisdom-you-know
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kls
My grandfather always said that "you cannot polish a turd". I really never
understood it coming from him as he was a perfectionist and a very good
engineer. It seemed like such a nihilistic statement from a man that could fix
or design anything and always had a we can fix this attitude. It was not till
I was older that I realized the true meaning of the statment. He was basically
saying you do what you have to do to get something working. If it is bad then
you patch it until you can replace it with something better. And that trying
to start from bad to get to good was not the best path but rather make the bad
passable until, it can be totally replaced with good. In my experience this
has held true. Trying to make something that is poorly built good is far more
time consuming than shoring it up and then replacing it with a better
solution.

~~~
swah
The Mythbusters guys did do that...

[http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-polishing-a-
turd...](http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-polishing-a-turd.html)

~~~
kls
Thank you so much for that one. My grandfather and I laughed for hours.

