In the same way some entirely distinct branch of learning may be of use to the inventor of firearms; but in all cases, this must be subservient to practical shooting knowledge; the man who tries to force his ideas onto a shooter, against the shooter’s expert knowledge, makes a mistake.
The highest authority can always learn something new from an expert; but the man ignorant of a subject who tries to teach an expert merely exposes his ignorance, like a politician who tells a general how to conduct a campaign.
CHAPTER LXIII
SIMPLIFICATION
It is human nature to keep on in the same old groove, to try to avoid change, even if that change is for the better. This habit is owing to it being so much easier not to have to think for oneself but merely to do as you see others do.
But following convention is not progress.
Convention is the deadly enemy of progress. Simplification is the twin sister of progress. All improvements are the result of simplification, not of elaboration.
The public when they see some very elaborate invention say “how clever,” but the really clever inventor is the one who can make a simple apparatus do the work that formerly could be done only by a much more complicated apparatus, or even took several apparatuses to accomplish.