Some general quotations of An Wang from his book: Lessons: An Autobiography

Last updated on 27th Sep. 2021

This post has some quotations of An Wang from his book, "Lessons: An Autobiography", written with Eugene Linden, https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Lessons.html?id=CSTxxSaJPGQC&redir_esc=y , that are general in nature and may not fit in, in the post I have been putting up about An Wang and Wang Laboratories. However, there may be some quotes of his which are mentioned here as well as in the above mentioned other posts of mine.

I will be adding to this post as I continue reading his book.

From "Introduction" chapter:

"But if there is anything that compelled me to write this book, it is to show that success is more a function of consistent common sense than of genius".

"Progress does not follow a straight line; the future is not a mere projection of trends in the present. Rather, it is revolutionary (which is why we speak of the computer revolution). It overturns the conventional wisdom of the present, which often conceals or ignores the clues to the future."

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From "The Age of Confusion" chapter:

"It was during these hours with her (An Wang's paternal grandmother) that I learned about Confucianism, the practical philosophy that has profoundly influenced Chinese character.

For twenty-five hundred years, Confucianism has evolved in many different ways -- some of them seemingly contradictory -- but its essence might be described as a combination of the golden rule and the notion of moderation and balance. Periodically Confucianism has gone into decline, as it did during the Age of Confusion. This cycle has repeated itself throughout Chinese history: a long period of stable bureaucratic rule is disrupted by a revolutionary period, when conventional wisdom is challenged. Confucian ideas dominate the stable periods and then become obscured during the revolutionary periods. But even Mao Tse-tung found that he could not rid China of Confucianism. It is too deeply embedded in China's soul."

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule : "The Golden Rule is the principle of treating others as one wants to be treated. It is a maxim that is found in most religions and cultures.[1: Antony Flew, ed. (1979). "golden rule". A Dictionary of Philosophy. London: Pan Books in association with The MacMillan Press. p. 134. ISBN 978-0-330-48730-6.]"

From "Going Public" chapter:

An Wang on how vital capital is for business growth: "It is a fact of life of business that you have to spend money for staffing and building before you reap the rewards of increased sales, even if people are begging to buy your products." - page 142.

From "Keeping Control" chapter:

In the context of bureaucracy in larger company of Burroughs that had made a friendly acquisition of Wang Labs. competitor in word processor systems space - Redactron, delaying Redactron's efforts to build a CRT-based word processor system so much that Redactron could not establish itself in CRT-based word processor system market, An Wang writes: "The high-technology marketplace is not particularly forgiving of companies that cannot swiftly develop, produce, and market a product." - page 190.

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Readers may want to see my related posts listed below:

*) Chinese-American computer pioneer An Wang (1920-1990) and Wang Laboratories founded by him: some aspects of their history of interest to me - Part 1,  https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/04/chinese-american-computer-pioneer-wang.html , 1st April 2021 (next part link is provided in the post).

*) My Wang VS computers software development work including over 30 months of assignments at Wang US & Europe centres in 1980s, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/03/my-wang-vs-computers-software.html , 11th March 2021.

*) Some info. on John Chambers and his association with Wang Laboratories, based on Web articles, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2019/01/some-info-on-john-chambers-and-his.html , 30th Jan. 2019

[I thank the authors & publisher of above mentioned Lessons book, and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above small extracts from the book on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]