History
The basic idea has been expressed though narrative a number of times. In one "Aesop's fable" that is recorded even before Aesop's time, The Fox and the Cat, the fox boasts of "hundreds of ways of escaping" while the cat has "only one". When they hear the hounds approaching, the cat scampers up a tree while "the fox in his confusion was caught up by the hounds." The fable ends with the moral, "Better one safe way than a hundred on which you cannot reckon." A related concept is expressed by the Centipede's dilemma.
In The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, the main character, Prince Hamlet, is often said to have a mortal flaw of thinking too much, such that his youth and vital energy are, in Shakespeare's words, "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."
Read more about this topic: Analysis Paralysis
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)