The Little Black Book of Decision Making

7 The Dance of Old and New

“The only really valuable thing is intuition.”

—Albert Einstein

Few would disagree with the idea that Albert Einstein was one of the most influential physicists of the modern age, a great visionary whose intuitive leaps often took years to prove mathematically. Such was Einstein's farsightedness that his reputation and stature in the world of physics grew even more in the decades following his death, as physicists gathered more evidence to support his theories. He was also known as a philosopher and humanist, and the breadth of his insights is readily evident from the many quotations by him that still circulate in popular culture.

Equally, Thomas Edison is pretty much unanimously viewed as one of the greatest inventors ...