Containment Quotes

“The fewer moving parts, the better." "Exactly. No truer words were ever spoken in the context of engineering.”
― Christian Cantrell, Containment

“Solving problems isn't so much about simplifying them as it is about properly and realistically reducing them to only what's relevant. And one of the best ways to reduce a problem to only what's relevant is to throw away most of your assumptions about it.”
― Christian Cantrell, Containment

“True imprisonment, Arik now realized, was not the inability to move about or go where one wished; it was the realization, acknowledgement, and ultimately the acceptance of that inability. Imprisonment was more powerful as an idea than it was a physical condition. He thought about how many people who considered themselves free were simply oblivious to their restraints.”
― Christian Cantrell, Containment

“Arik felt apprehensive. He was accustomed to having a great deal of freedom in his research and in the topics he chose to pursue, but he was starting to realize that such indulgences were the special privilege of childhood. For the first time, he realized how much of what he took for granted was going to change. He was about to become a resource—assigned specific tasks that were to be completed in specific and prescribed manners. His creativity and productivity were to be constrained and directed toward only those problems that his superiors deemed worthy of his effort. Arik was about to become an adult.”
― Christian Cantrell, Containment

“The next generation of scientists and engineers needed to get better at the things computers weren’t good at: creativity, intuition, resourcefulness, and perhaps most importantly, curiosity. Half”
― Christian Cantrell, Containment

“If something seemed simple, you probably just weren’t looking at it hard enough or peeling away enough layers to see what’s really beneath.”
― Christian Cantrell, Containment

“The real meaning of Occam’s razor, Rosemary believed, was that explanations and solutions should be free from elements that have no real bearing on the system in question—that solving problems isn’t so much about simplifying them as it is about properly and realistically reducing them to only what’s relevant. And”
― Christian Cantrell, Containment

“The real meaning of Occam’s razor, Rosemary believed, was that explanations and solutions should be free from elements that have no real bearing on the system in question—that solving problems isn’t so much about simplifying them as it is about properly and realistically reducing them to only what’s relevant.”
― Christian Cantrell, Containment

“Arik believed that one of the most fundamental laws of human psychology was that force caused resistance. Make people feel trapped, and they will never stop attempting to escape. But obscure the trap well enough, and it was possible to stop the idea of escape from even forming in your prisoners' minds.”
― Christian Cantrell, Containment

“Most events people referred to as tragedies happened suddenly and spectacularly: earthquakes shaking entire cities to the ground, spacecrafts breaking up in the heat of reentry, nuclear reactors melting down during routine tests. These were the things we worried about, guarded against, spent countless hours training for. But Arik was realizing now that disaster could be dissembled into small unidentifiable components and smuggled past even our best defences. It could be allowed to accumulate right in front of us without tripping an alarm or registering on a sensor. Misfortune knew how to use our egos and our pride against us to lure us into vulnerable and defenceless positions. The more obstacles you placed in death's path, the more it was compelled to slip in through the cracks.”
― Christian Cantrell, Containment