Quotes

Geniuses and crackpots

• To see things in the seed, that is genius. (Lao-tzu)

• Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. (Albert Einstein)

• Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. (Arthur Conan Doyle).

• Talent is like a marksman who hits a target that others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target others cannot even see. (Schopenhauer).

• When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. (Jonathan Swift)

• But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. (Carl Sagan, "Broca's Brain")

• They laughed at Copernicus. They laughed at Gallileo. But look who's laughing now! (Anon)

• For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. (H. L. Mencken)

• Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. (Plato)

  
  

• Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly. (José Ortega y Gasset)

Dreams and Wanderlust

• Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music still in them. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

• Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. (Norman Cousins)

• Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: "It might have been". (John Greenleaf Whittier)

• Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (Anon.'s corollary to Clarke's third law)

• You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?" (George Bernhard Shaw)

• One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar. (Helen Keller)

• To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. (Robert Louis Stevenson)
• When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. (Leonardo da Vinci)

• The meek will inherit the Earth..... The rest of us will go to the stars. (Anon)

• Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever. (Prince Li'r, "The Last Unicorn")

• Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination. (Edward Abbey)

• There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think. (Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged")

• There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. (Hamlet)

• I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. (Hamlet)

• The world is no longer a romantic place; some of its people still are however, and therein lies the promise. Don't let the world win. (John Cage, "Ally McBeal")

Human nature (non-religious)

• The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. (Henri Bergson)

• Worse than being blind, is to see and have no vision. (Helen Keller)

• When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail. (Abraham Maslow)

• We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet. (Anon)

• Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries. (James Michener)

• Zimmerman's Law of Complaints: Nobody notices when things go right.

• The truth shall make you free, but first it shall make you angry. (Anon)

• Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. (Susan Ertz)

• The person who can state his antagonist's point of view to the satisfaction of the antagonist is more likely to be correct than the person who cannot. (Paul Hewitt)

• There are two classes of forecasters: Those who don't know... and those who don't know they don't know. (John Kenneth Galbraith).

• Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick himself up and carry on. (Winston Churchill).

• It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. (John Andrew Holmes)

• If you think the world is all wrong, remember that it contains people like you. (Mahatma Gandhi).

• Everybody wants to save the world, but nobody wants to help Mum with the dishes. (P.J. O'Rourke).

  
  

• It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature and affect to despise it are among its worst and least pleasant examples. (Charles Dickens, "Nicholas Nickleby")

• The price of hating other humans is loving oneself less. (Eldridge Cleaver)

Human nature (religious)

• If you were taught that elves caused rain, every time it rained, you'd see the proof of elves. (Ariex)

• If God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. (Voltaire)

• If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated. (Voltaire)

• The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it. (George Santayana)

• God is an invention of Man. So the nature of God is only a shallow mystery. The deep mystery is the nature of Man. (Nanrei Kobori)

• He who carves the Buddha never worships him. (Chinese proverb)

• The Messiah will only come when he is no longer needed. (Franz Kafka)

  
  

• The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. (Kint, "The Usual Suspects"; derived from C.S. Lewis, "The Screwtape Letters")

You can't tell me, it's not worth fighting for

• Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!

• Citius - Altius - Fortius

• La ilah ha ilul Allah!

• I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it. (Voltaire)

• What is left when honor is lost? (Publius Syrus)

• One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. (Friedrich Nietzsche).

• Better to light the candle, than curse the darkness. (Confucius)

• One idea can light a thousand candles. (Ralph Waldo Emerson?)
• If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it. (Winston Churchill)
• What you do is of little significance. But it is very important that you do it. (Mahatma Gandhi)

• It has nothing to do with defending our country, except to make it worth defending. (Robert Wilson)

• The hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. (Dante Alighieri)

• To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice. (Confucius)

• I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. (John Adams)

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• If I were forced to choose between my country and my friend, I hope I would be brave enough to choose my friend. (E.M. Forster)

• It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. (Alfred Adler)

• I want you to remember that no one ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. (Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.)

Science, mathematics and the universe

• There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. (Hamlet)

• Politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity. (Albert Einstein)

• The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible. (Albert Einstein)

• The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless. (Stephen Weinberg)

• Wir dürfen nicht denen glauben, die heute mit philosophischer Miene und über-legenem Tone den Kulturuntergang prophezeien und sich in dem Ignorabimus gefallen. Füruns gibt es kein Ignorabimus, und meiner Meinung nach auch für die Naturwissenschaftüberhaupt nicht. Statt des törichten Ignorabimus heisse im Gegenteil unsere Lösung: Wir müssen wissen. Wir werden wissen. (David Hilbert)

• So far as the theories of mathematics are about reality, they are not certain; so far as they are certain, they are not about reality. (Albert Einstein)

• Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler. (Albert Einstein)

• The truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought. (Richard Feynman)

• When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books. You will be reading meanings. (W. E. B. Du Bois)

• In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. (Stephen Jay Gould)

• Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof. (Ashley Montagu)

• Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. (Andre Gide)

• Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money. (Leon Lederman).

• One thing I have learned in a long life is that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike... and yet, it is the most precious thing we have. (Albert Einstein)

• Nothing is built on stone; all is built in sand. But we must build as if the sand were stone. (Jorge Luis Borges).

• When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together. (Isaac Asimov)

• Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. (Mahatma Gandhi)

• A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation. (Max Gluckman)

• Science advances one funeral at a time. (Max Planck)

• The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..." (Isaac Asimov)

• Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What have we to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity! (Isaac Asimov)

• [Kepler] preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, and that is the heart of science. (Carl Sagan, "Cosmos")

• The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. (Niels Bohr)

• An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field. (Niels Bohr).

  
  

• When you take stuff from one writer, it's plagiarism. When you take stuff from many writers, it's research. (Wilson Mizner).

• The scientist keeps the romantic honest, and the romantic keeps the scientist human. (Tom Robbins, "Another Roadside Attraction")

• The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell. (Saint Augustine)

Cynicism

• Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. (John Kenneth Galbraith)

• Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. (George Bernard Shaw)

• Traditional human government consists of thieves and murderers. By adopting the electoral process, we have weeded out the murderers. This is actually about as good as it gets. (Anon)

• Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. (Ronald Reagan).

• It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. (Gore Vidal).

• Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. (Thoreau)

• University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. (Henry Kissinger)

• A developer is someone who wants to build a house in the woods. An environmentalist is someone who already has a house in the woods. (Dennis Miller)

• Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages. (?)

• Diplomacy is the art of licking a neighbor's boots while threatening to stab him in the back. (Napoleon)

• The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer. (Henry Kissinger)

• Give a man fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

• There are two rules for success. (1) Never tell everything you know. (Roger Lincoln).

• Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach. (H.L. Mencken).

• Those who cannot teach -- administrate. (Martin)

• Love is like racing across the frozen tundra on a snowmobile which flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice-weasels come. (Nietzsche, according to Matt Groening)

• Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. (H. L. Mencken)

  
  

• The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. (Mother Teresa)

• The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. (George Bernard Shaw)

• Remember, beneath every cynic there lies a romantic, and probably an injured one. (Glenn Beck)

Meta

• When a thing has been said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it. (Anatole France)

• Next to being witty yourself, the best thing is to quote another's wit. (C.N. Bovee)

• Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it. (Gordon R. Dickson)

• The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. (Ecclesiastes 9:17)

• If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. (Anatole France)

• Human beings know a lot of things, some of which are true, and apply them. When we like the results, we call it wisdom. (Herbert Simon)

• Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced. Even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it. (John Keats)

• To generalize is to be an idiot. (William Blake)

• A witty saying proves nothing. (Voltaire)

• There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it. (Cicero)

• Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it. (George Santayana)

• The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well. (Elias Canetti)