The modeler's Hippocratic Oath

I will never sacrifice reality for elegance without explaining why I have done so.

You can find the rest here. Replace "models" with "theories" or "assumptions" or "ideas" and you can generalize much of the wisdom contained within.

Clarke's other two laws

I always hear about one of Arthur Clarke's three laws of prediction, that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

The other two are just as interesting, if not quite as pithy and memorable.

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.