Quotations
From Say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book
"Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, Of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame...
LEWIS CARROLL 1832-98
Let me die a youngman's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death.
Roger McGough
...Thus it is possible to say that you and your neighbour and I, each one of us and all of us, are truly and literally a little bit of star dust.
WILLIAM A. FOWLER
If in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on.... [in the atomic hypothesis], you will see, there in an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.
Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)
"11:15, restate my assumptions: 1. Mathematics is the language of nature"
Maximillian Cohen - PI
"we don't see any light at the end of the tunnel".....
"there is a tunnel after the tunnel."
Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Tareq Aziz, November 12, 1998
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
"If you can't measure it - you don't understand it"
"The outlook for the week -
Not as good as the strong"
Roger McGough
"Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought."
Principles of War, Sun Tzu, 400-320 BC
If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants.
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.
"I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them."
Ever tried - ever failed - no matter - try again - fail. Again. Fail better
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.
Richard Feynman (1918 - 1988)
The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
...that which we are, we are—
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson
There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance.
Ali ibn Abi-Talib
'What gunpowder did for war, the printing press has done for the mind.
Wendell Phillips
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?"
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
Why look'st thou so?"--With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
"...what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence"
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
But, however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive.
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting – it might be more comforting, for all I know. But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true.
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it?"
"This prodigious event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars— and yet they have done it themselves."
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125 tr. Walter Kaufmann
"It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book — what everyone else does not say in a whole book." The Twilight of the Idols, Friedrich Nietzsche
Eternity is a long time. Especially towards the end. - Woody Allen
