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Perfect is the enemy of good is an aphorism that means insistence on perfection often prevents implementation of good improvements. Achieving absolute perfection may be impossible; one should not let the struggle for perfection stand in the way of appreciating or executing on something that is imperfect but still of value.
In La Bégueule (1772), Voltaire wrote Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, which is often translated as "The perfect is the enemy of the good" (literally: "The best is the enemy of the good"). The nirvana fallacy was given its name by economist Harold Demsetz in 1969, [2] [3] who said: [1]
"One of the problems here we have is that the better is the enemy of good: It has to be perfect," Rutte said of the current paradigm. "But it doesn't have to be perfect."
The following quote from Jan Odhnoff's 1965 paper is appropriate: [16] ... Perfect is the enemy of good; Portmanteau; Principle of good enough; Rational ignorance;
The quote itself says nothing about a distribution of effort, nor does it make a claim about when sufficient effort is reached, and on the other hand the Pareto principle does not inherently imply that any effort beyond the 80% completion is 'excessive' or 'the enemy of good'. The relationship seems forced.
This page in a nutshell: "The best is the enemy of the good." Voltaire , La Bégueule (1772) Sometimes on Wikipedia, you will try to fix a problem in an article and encounter resistance along these lines: "Why should we change this article when hundreds of other articles have the same problem?
Gorshkov is often associated with the phrase "'Better' is the enemy of 'Good Enough'" ("Лучшее - враг хорошего") which is reputed to have hung on the wall of his office as a motto. Similar sentiments have been attributed to Clausewitz and Voltaire. The motto appears in the Tom Clancy novel, The Hunt for Red October.
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