Thoughts deduced by Ing. Porta from his professional experience:

• + No problem badly defined can have a solution (no ill person can be cured if badly diagnosed.)
• + The level of any discussion is given by the least informed party or the one whose intelligence has been least trained.
• + To understand is to become equal.
• +If I, at this moment, am unable to demonstrate that you are mistaken, that does not mean you are right.
• + The art of the lawyer is to pass the burden of proof to the other.
• + No-one realises that they don't know something until they know it. The prehistoric stone-cutter died without knowing that logarithms exist. Cicero didn't know that electricity existed; he was not even able to suspect that it might. This is the fundamental problem with the theory of knowledge (it seems that Ing. Porta has discovered this).
• + The Office Theory (Brazil): what I don't understand is necessarily wrong.
• + Whether the scholars and followers of St. Thomas Aquinas like it or not, evidence is not a sufficient criteria for truth. Galileo was condemned because it was evident that the sun circled round the earth, iron ships could not float, etc.
• + The best level is achieved by the written not the spoken word.
• + The accuracy of all judgement depends on the accuracy of the information on which it is based.
• + In all discussion which is always dominated by reasoning that elucidates the truth, there is no deaf person worse than one who does not want to hear.
• + Only great spirits have broad enough shoulders to bear the brunt of back-tracking on a subject they have defended all their lives.
• + Each person is a prisoner of his own history. That is why great changes can only be made by the next generation.
• + When someone writes an article and for some reason wishes to avoid saying something ("hiding the milk") [an Argentine saying that captures both the intention to conceal something quite innocuous and the fact that in time the smell will give disclose what is no longer innocuous!], the subconscious always betrays them and they end up saying more than they meant to. At the fifth reading what was concealed is revealed.
• + When an article is written containing emphatic assertions (because they are evident), after a few years it becomes clear that they ought not to have been asserted quite so firmly.
• + It is important to read a lot of old, apparently outdated, things. The information they give is susceptible to reinterpretation thanks to the progress of knowledge. Moreover, they force open new mental processes of a creative nature. This is especially valuable for patents.
• + Functionaries never let it be known or felt that they represent the community. This is seen, for example, in the discussions that are held between the employment minister and the trades union leaders (it was even worse before!)
• + There are subtle concepts that are, nevertheless, important.
• + Oh! the false dilemmas!
• + No chain is stronger than its weakest link.
• + A failure does not prove anything, but one single success does prove that something is possible.
• + One failure might have any explanation; two failures and things become very ugly, but three, and the gods are against you.
• + Computers are no substitute for talent.
• + The law cannot go against the nature of things.
• + Three women cannot be set to produce a baby in three months.
• Laws are made for man not man for laws. If something doesn't work the law (norms) must be changed.
• + There are some norms that are so for historical reasons and others because they are essential affirmations. The former may be violated but the latter no.
• + Never take anything for granted.
• + Know that what isn't written down doesn't exist.