Sayings

There are certain things that people say that seem to be accepted as some kind of universal wisdom. Things said so often that no one really sits down and thinks about what they really mean or what could be implied by these so called "truths".

For example take "curiosity killed the cat." On the surface it's simple, cat sees dangerous thing (e.g meat grinder), cat doesn't know what dangerous thing is, cat investigates dangerous thing, cat becomes puddle on the floor (i'm not a cat person).

However what's implied here is that all curiousity is bad, that maybe 500 years ago Magellan should have been told to step away from his boats, you never know what lurks in the sea, or maybe that Alexander Fleming should put down his test tubes.

Now you might say to me "hey, you're using the saying incorrectly, it's only meant to be said about things that look dangerous." Now i don't mean to be pedantic (well only a little bit), but the saying doesn't say being curious about dangerous things killed the cat, which leaves the assumption that ANY curiosity can kill a cat.

Now i'm thinking about it, is it just me or do people who say "curiosity killed the cat." up to something. like they know something that you don't, like if something 'happened' to go wrong they would have the advantage of plausable deniability if they were called out on it, but paranoia aside.......

Now we've all heard the saying "you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette." Now wouldn't it be convenient if all we had to do to create innovation was to kill a few cats?