Quotations by Theme
Science - Time
"We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them."
Abigail Adams, 1744-1818
"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human."
Alan Turing, 1912-1954
"The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism."
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
"Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
"Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving."
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
"Our nervous system developed for one sole purpose, to maintain our lives and satisfy our needs. All our reflexes serve this purpose. this makes us utterly egotistic. With rare exceptions people are really interested in one thing only: themselves. Everybody, by necessity, is the center of his own universe."
Albert Szent-Györgyi,
"Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals."
Aldo Leopold,
"Death is really a great blessing for humanity, without it there could be no real progress. People who lived for ever would not only hamper and discourage the young, but they would themselves lack sufficient stimulus to be creative."
Alfred Adler, 1870-1937
"Man knows much more than he understands."
Alfred Adler, 1870-1937
"An inventor is a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization."
Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914
"For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives."
Amy Lowell,
"A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories."
Andy Goldsworthy, 1956
"Infancy is what is eternal, and the rest, all the rest, is brevity, extreme brevity."
Antonio Porchia,
"That peculiar disease of intellectuals, that infatuation with ideas at the expense of experience, that compels experience to conform to bookish expectations."
Archibald MacLeish,
"The more thou dost advance, the more thy feet pitfalls will meet. The Path that leadeth on is lighted by one fire- the light of daring burning in the heart. The more one dares, the more he shall obtain. The more he fears, the more that light shall pale - and that alone can guide."
Aristotle,
"Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach."
Aristotle,
"The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet"
Aristotle,
"Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature."
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930
"Science and Technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconscious with habits, values, expectations, dreams. The dialectic between past and future will continue to form our lives."
Arthur Schlesinger,
"The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence."
Ayn Rand, 1905-1982
"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do."
B. F. Skinner, 1904-1990
"My studies in Speculative philosophy, metaphysics, and science are all summed up in the image of a mouse called man running in and out of every hole in the Cosmos hunting for the Absolute Cheese."
Benjamin DeCasseres, 1893-1961
"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge."
Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881
"The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do."
Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881
"The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error."
Bertolt Brecht, 1898-1956
"William James used to preach "the will to believe". For my part, I should wish to preach "the will to doubt". What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite."
Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970
"Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it."
Bertrand Russell,
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970
"Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery."
Bertrand Russell,
"We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities."
Bill Maher,
"As the astounding vastness of the universe becomes obscured, there is a throwback to a vision of a universe that essentially amounts to earth, or one's country, or state or city. Perspective becomes myopic."
Brian Greene, 1963-
"Within the hearts of men, loyalty and consideration are esteemed greater than success."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"Where wise actions are the fruit of life, wise discourse is the pollination."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"Truth is not a matter of fact but a state of harmony with progress and hope. Enveloped only in its wings will we ever soar to the promise of our greater selves."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"Join me in my quest for a greater understanding of our existence. Join me in my desire for a greater self. Join me as I seek the humility to love and understand my fellow man."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"You may find many contradictory statements and philosophies within my writings. However, to this I will say such is life, for life is full of contradictions."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand."
Cecil Day Lewis, 1904-1972
"Essentially, all life depends upon the soil .... There can be no life without soil and no soil without life; they have evolved together."
Charles E. Kellogg,
"Phenomena of a man alone on a desert island can be explained in terms of "mass psychology" - inasmuch as the mind of no man is a unit, but is a community of mental states that influence one another."
Charles Fort, 1874-1932
"All biologic phenomena act to adjust: there are no biologic actions other than adjustments. Adjustment is another name for Equilibrium. Equilibrium is the Universal, or that which has nothing external to derange it."
Charles Fort,
"Eternity is not something that begins after you're dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now."
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1860-1935
"Natural Selection never made it come to pass, as a habit of nature, that an unsupported stone should move downwards rather than upwards. It applies to no part of inorganic nature, and is very limited even in the phenomena of organic life."
Chauncey Wright, 1830-1875
"The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form."
Chauncey Wright,
"Strictly speaking, Natural Selection is not a cause at all, but is the mode of operation of a certain quite limited class of causes."
Chauncey Wright,
"Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure."
Confucius, 551-479 BCE
"No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance."
Confucius, 551-479 BCE
"The cause-effect sequences in our brains are just as determining, just as inescapable, as anywhere else in Nature."
Corliss Lamont,
"Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it!"
Daniel Dennett, 1942-
"Actually, I think my view is compatible with much of the work going on now in neuroscience and psychology, where people are studying the relationship of consciousness to neural and cognitive processes without really trying to reduce it to those processes"
David Chalmers, 1966-
"To think is to practice brain chemistry."
Deepak Chopra, 1946-
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion."
Democritus, 460-370BCE
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion."
Democritus,
"There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other."
Desiderius Erasmus,
"Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun."
Don Marquis,
"That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding."
Edward Abbey, 1927-1989
"A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective."
Edward Teller, 1908-2003
"The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge."
Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915
"The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge."
Elbert Hubbard,
"Orthodoxy: That peculiar condition where the patient can neither eliminate an old idea nor absorb a new one."
Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915
"The supernatural is the natural not yet understood."
Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915
"Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence."
Elihu Burritt,
"My mission is to kill time, and time's to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers."
Emile Cioran, 1911-1995
"Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos."
Eric Temple Bell, 1883-1960
"Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth."
Eric Temple Bell, 1883-1960
"Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions."
Eric Temple Bell, 1883-1960
"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers."
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980
"Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man."
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980
"Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines."
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980
"The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots."
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980
"Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything."
Ernest Gaines, 1933-
"Thing, body, matter, are nothing apart from the combinations of the elements, - the colours, sounds, and so forth - nothing apart from their so-called attributes."
Ernst Mach, 1838-1916
"Many an article that I myself penned twenty years ago impresses me now as something quite foreign to myself."
Ernst Mach, 1838-1916
"What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough."
Eugene Delacroix, 1798-1863
"Many men of science and poets have in their own manner, by various ways and means, and aided by others, sought unceasingly to create a more tolerable world for everyone."
Eyvind Johnson,
"Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use."
Ezra Pound,
"How are men to be secured in any rights without instruction; how to be secured in the equal exercise of those rights without equality of instruction? By instruction understand me to mean knowledge - just knowledge; not talent, not genius, not inventive mental powers."
Frances Wright,
"I know perfectly well that at this moment the whole universe is listening to us," Jean Giraudoux wrote in The Madwoman of Chaillot, "and that every word we say echoes to the remotest star."
Frank Drake,
"The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand."
Frank Herbert, 1920-1986
"The truth is more important than the facts."
Frank Lloyd Wright, 1869-1959
"By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired."
Franz Kafka, 1883-1924
"Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present."
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900
"There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy."
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900
"It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around."
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900
"We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing."
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742-1799
"An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think."
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
"Whenever I attempt to frame a simple idea of time, abstracted from the succession of ideas in my mind, which flows uniformly, and is participated by all beings, I am lost and entangled in inextricable difficulties."
George Berkeley, 1685-1753
"Imagination is the beginning of creation."
George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
"Science... never solves a problem without creating ten more."
George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
"Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal."
George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."
George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink."
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), 1903-1950
"Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated."
George Santayana, 1863-1952
"Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace."
George Santayana,
"The weapons laboratory of Los Alamos stands as a reminder that our very power as pattern finders can work against us, that it is possible to discern enought of the universe's underlying order to tap energy so powerful that it can destroy its discoverers or slowly poison them with its waste."
Geroger Johnson,
"Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind."
Giordano Bruno, 1548-1600
"When a truth is necessary, the reason for it can be found by analysis, that is, by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths until the primary ones are reached."
Gottfried Leibniz,
"Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea."
Guy Debord, 1931-1994
"Only for you, children of doctrine and learning, have we written this work. Examine this book, ponder the meaning we have dispersed in various places and gathered again; what we have concealed in one place we have disclosed in another, that it may be understood by your wisdom."
H. C. Agrippa von Nettesheim,
"Time is the great legalizer, even in the field of morals."
H. L. Mencken, 1880-1956
"It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously."
H. L. Mencken, 1880-1956
"Ignorance is the mother of fear."
Harry Homes,
"As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill."
Helen Keller, 1880-1968
"Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house."
Henri Poincare,
"It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians."
Henrik Ibsen, 1828-1906
"Men have become the tools of their tools."
Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862
"The world is but a canvas to our imaginations."
Henry Thoreau,
"In the evolution of mankind there has always been a certain degree of social coherence."
Herbert Read,
"The most general law in nature is equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency."
Herbert Read,
"Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations."
Herbert Spencer,
"We must rather conclude from this that heat itself is a motion, an internal invisible motion of the smallest elementary particles of bodies."
Hermann von Helmholtz, 1821-1894
"These facts no longer permit us to regard heat as a substance, for its quantity is not unchangeable. It can be produced anew from the vis viva of motion destroyed; it can be destroyed, and then produces motion."
Hermann von Helmholtz,
"Reason we call that faculty innate in us of discovering laws and applying them with thought."
Hermann von Helmholtz,
"There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance."
Hippocrates, 460BC- 377BC
"The irreversibility of time is the mechanism that brings order out of chaos."
Ilya Prigogine, 1917-2003
"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason."
Immanuel Kant,
"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life."
Immanuel Kant, 1724 - 1804
"To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction."
Isaac Newton,
"A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding."
Isaac Newton,
"To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me."
Isaac Newton, 1641-1727
"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton,
"To understand is to perceive patterns."
Isaiah Berlin, 1909-1997
"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
J. Robert Oppenheimer,
"There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility."
Jacob Bronowski, 1908-1974
"Biology occupies a position among the sciences at once marginal and central. Marginal because--the living world constituting but a tiny and very "special" part of the universe--it does not seem likely that the study of living beings will ever uncover general laws applicable outside the biosphere. But if the ultimate aim of the whole of science is indeed, as I believe, to clarify man's relationship to the universe, then biology must be accorded a central position."
Jacques Monod,
"What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on."
Jacques Yves Cousteau,
"Problems come from the environment, the cities, the economy, the racism. They come from architecture, school systems, capitalism, exploitation."
James Hillman,
"Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind."
James Russell Lowell,
"Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet."
Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832
"Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
"He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once."
John Archibald Wheeler, 1911-
"Realism is not a matter of any fidelity to an empirical reality, but of the discursive conventions by which and for which a sense of reality is constructed."
John Fiske, 1842-1901
"The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept."
John Gardner,
"There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed and the prejudices of their education."
John Locke, 1632-1704
"The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others."
John Locke,
"Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding."
John Locke,
"The danger with the scholar’s conceptual theory is that it suffers a constant tendency to abstraction, to remoteness from real life ... the inherent logic of internal consistency is liable to become more important than correspondence with facts."
John Madge, 1914-
"There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see."
John Masefield, 1878-1967
"I'm a very passionate believer in the unity of knowledge. There is one world of reality - one world of our experience that we're seeking to describe."
John Polkinghorne, 1930-
"Evolution, of course, is not something that simply applies to life here on earth; it applies to the whole universe."
John Polkinghorne,
"After all, the universe required ten billion years of evolution before life was even possible; the evolution of the stars and the evolving of new chemical elements in the nuclear furnaces of the stars were indispensable prerequisites for the generation of life."
John Polkinghorne,
"But the first the general public learned about the discovery was the news of the destruction of Hiroshima by the atom bomb. A splendid achievement of science and technology had turned malign. Science became identified with death and destruction."
Joseph Rotblat, 1908-2005
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge."
Kahlil Gibran, 1883-1931
"I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art."
Kahlil Gibran, 1883-1931
"Man merely discovers' he never can and never will invent."
Kahlil Gibran, 1883-1931
"A man's true wealth is the good he does in the world. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror."
Kahlil Gibran, 1883-1931
"Say not, 'I have found the truth' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'"
Kahlil Gibran, 1883-1931
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
Kahlil Gibran, 1883-1931
"Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form."
Karl Marx,
"The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people."
Karl Marx,
"In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality."
Karl Popper,
"The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers."
Lewis Thomas, 1913-1993
"Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement."
Ludwig Wittgenstein,
"A fact is like a sack - it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place."
Luigi Pirandello,
"The history of mankind is the history of ideas."
Luigi Pirandello, 1867-1936
"The end of science is not to prove a theory, but to improve mankind."
Manly Hall,
"Everything great that we know has come from neurotics. never will the world be aware of how much it owes to them, nor above all what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it."
Marcel Proust,
"Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces."
Marcel Proust,
"Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them."
Marcel Proust,
"Every instant of time is a pinprick of eternity. All things are petty, easily changed, vanishing away."
Marcus Aurelius,
"If you have knowledge let others light their candles at it."
Margaret Fuller, 1810-1850
"Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited."
Margaret Mead,
"To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, is more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons."
Marilyn French,
"To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe."
Marilyn vos Savant,
"To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe."
Marilyn vos Savant, 1946-
"Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.
Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court."
Mark Twain, 1835-1910
"A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding."
Marshall McLuhan,
"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us. We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us."
Marshall McLuhan,
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
Martin Luther King,
"To respect what others have said, requires education, to challenge it requires brains."
Mary Pettibone Poole, 1938-
"How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow."
Mary Shelly,
"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
Muriel Rukeyser, 1913-1980
"In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork." Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark." Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of a gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark," as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork." But the book represents the dreams of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau words" in Through the Looking Glass. From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark," in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature."
Murray Gell-Mann,
"Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the latter than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never."
Napoleon Bonaparte,
"Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success."
Napoleon Hill, 1883-1970
"In a world in which the total of human knowledge is doubling about every ten years, our security can rest only on our ability to learn."
Nathaniel Branden,
"The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes.
Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry--is not even a "subject"--but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning."
Neil Postman,
"Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two."
Octavio Paz, 19141998
"Children, behold the Chimpanzee/He sits on the ancestral tree/From which we sprang in ages gone/I’m glad we sprang; had we held on/We might, for aught that I can say/Be horrid chimpanzees today."
Oliver Herford, 1863-1935
"The answers are all out there, we just need to ask the right questions."
Oscar Wilde,
"The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for."
Oscar Wilde,
"Time the devourer of all things."
Ovid,
"The cause is hidden. The effect is visible to all."
Ovid,
"No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding."
Plato, 427-347 BCE
"The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction."
Plato, 427-347 BCE
"The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant."
Plato, 427-347 BCE
"As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom."
Pythagoras,
"In the highest civilisation, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known it's satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
"The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
"He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
"So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the path of each man's genius contracts itself to a very few hours."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam that flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his own thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a sort of alienated majesty."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
"Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
"Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
"Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions; the surest poison is time."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
"Science does not know its debt to imagination."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882
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