 | "They asked: Why do wise men call upon the
wealthy while the wealthy abstain from the wise?
And he answered: T'is that the wise are cognizant of wealth
but the wealthy spurn wisdom." |
| "The highest virtue in man - that he is forever asking." |
| "Think neither a thousand friends many nor a single
enemy few." |
| "A needle's eye is ample space for two lovers while the world's
breadth will not suffice for two enemies" |
|
Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gavirol (approx 1020-1060) |
 |
| Science is for those who learn;
poetry, for those who know. |
Joseph Roux |
| In science one tries to tell people,
in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever
knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite. |
Paul A. M. Dirac |
| Poetry can communicate before it is
understood |
T. S. Eliot |
| “Judge a man by his questions rather than
by his answers” |
| “To
succeed in the world it is not enough to be
stupid, you must also be well-mannered.” |
| “If there were no God, it
would have been necessary to invent him.” |
|
Voltaire |
| There's a statistical theory that
if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd
eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the
Internet, we now know this isn't true. |
Ian Hart |
| Men think epilepsy divine, merely
because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine
which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine
things. |
Hippocrates (ca. 460-377 BCE)
|
| "What is wanted is not the will to believe,
but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite."
Skeptical Essays (1928) |
| The fundamental cause of trouble in the
world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent
are full of doubt. "Christian Ethics" from
Marriage and Morals (1950), |
| "Many people would rather die than think;
in fact, most do." |
| "It has been said that man is a rational
animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could
support this." "An Outline of Intellectual
Rubbish", in Unpopular Essays |
| Man is a credulous animal, and must believe
something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be
satisfied with bad ones. "An Outline of
Intellectual Rubbish", in Unpopular Essays |
|
Bernard Russel (1872-1970) |
| "All you need is ignorance and
confidence; then success is sure" |
| "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." |
| "One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that
myriads have believed in it. They have also believed the world was
flat." |
|
Mark Twain (1835-1910) |
| "Faith: not wanting to know what is true." |
| "God is a thought making crooked all that is straight."
|
| "Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that
they are not even shallow." |
|
Friedrich Nietzche
1844-1900 |
| Perfection is achieved, not when there
is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. |
Antoine de St.
Exupery 1900-1944 |
| Scientific innovations are forever attributed only
to their last discoverer |
Daniel J. Amit |
| Confidence is what you feel before you
really understand |
no sure.... |
| "I am a great
believer in luck: I
find that the harder I work, the more I have of it." |
| "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every
fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a
God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of
reason than that of blindfolded fear.
" |
|
Thomas
Jefferson (1743-1826) |
| Once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed... |
| All truth passes through three stages. First, it is
ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is
accepted as being self-evident. |
| Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys harmonic
laws. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must
later go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a
certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain
at rest. |
| Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend
on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads
to the other. |
| The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many
other things of greater value. |
|
Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788-1860) |
| “It is pretty clear, if reality does
not determine the measured value, at least the measurable value determines
reality” |
E. Schrodinger
|
| "When
I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about
how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not
beautiful, I know it is wrong." |
Buckminster
Fuller (1895-1983) |
| Don't
worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll
have to ram them down people's throats. |
Aiken
Howard (1900-1973) |
|
|
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) |
| The great tragedy of science is the
slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. |
T. H. Huxley
(1825-1895) |
| ...man will occasionally stumble over
the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it,
and carry on. |
| Success is the ability to go from one failure to another
with no loss of enthusiasm. |
|
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) |
|
"The pencil is mightier than the pen." |
R. M. Pirsig |
| "The best proof of intelligent life in
space is that they have never tried to contact us." |
|
| "Photons have mass ?!? I didn't even know they were
Catholic..." |
x |
| "Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a
comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they
leave things." |
Woody Allen. |
| "When small men cast large shadows, it’s a sure sign
that the sun is setting." |
Nathaniel Lee (1649-1692) |
|
It seems sometimes that through a preoccupation with
science, we acquire a firmer hold over the vicissitudes of life and
meet them with greater calm, but in reality we have done no more
than to find a way to escape from our sorrows.
|
Hermann Minkowski in a letter to David Hilbert
|
| Never mistake motion for action. |
Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1950) |
"Prediction is very difficult.
Especially about the future."
|
You
think people can hear us? – Oh yes, already many have closed
their windows
 ,
1882-1949
|
