“Don’t waste time reinventing the wheel.
Borrow the cart instead.”
— Helmutt Churchill
📜 About Helmutt Churchill & the Quote
Born in Leipzig in 1940, Helmutt Churchill developed his philosophy amidst post-war ingenuity — where repurposing wasn’t just a skill, it was a necessity. His quote about carts and wheels nods to his lifelong preference for pragmatic absurdity over romantic originality.
Rather than spend hours perfecting what already works, Helmutt would recommend ‘borrowing’ the whole apparatus and repurposing it with confidence. In his 1987 lecture “Efficiency, Ethics, and Other Inconveniences”, he quipped:
“In a world full of carts, it’s the confident borrower who arrives first — usually downhill.”
Churchill’s philosophy isn’t about taking shortcuts blindly — it’s about recognising which paths are already paved and rolling down them with style (and plausible deniability).
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