Quotes

Here are a few of my favorite quotes.

Physics / Mathematics

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

— Werner Heisenberg

Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.

— Niels Bohr

Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things that are beyond it.

— Pascal

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.

— Richard Feynman

And now reader, — bestir thyself — for though we will always lend thee proper assistance in difficult places, as we do not, like some others, expect thee to use the arts of divination to discover our meaning, yet we shall not indulge thy laziness where nothing but thy own attention is required; for thou art highly mistaken if thou dost imagine that we intended when we begun this great work to leave thy sagacity nothing to do or that without sometimes exercising this talent thou wilt be able to travel through our pages with any pleasure or profit to thyself.

— Henry Fielding, quoted in David Saxon’s book, Elementary Quantum Mechanics

There are tragedies caused by war, famine, and pestilence.  But there are also intellectual tragedies caused by limitations of the human mind.

— Morris Kline, Mathematics:  The Loss of Certainty

If all the books and articles written for the layman about relativity theory were laid end to end, they’d probably reach from here to the moon.  “Everybody knows” that Einstein’s theory of relativity is the greatest achievement of twentieth-century science, and everybody is wrong.

— John Gribbin, In Search of Schroedinger’s Cat

Learning

We must view young people not as empty bottles to be filled, but as candles to be lit!

— Robert H. Shaffer

The university is not engaged in making ideas safe for students.  It is engaged in making students safe for ideas.

— Clark Kerr

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

— Joseph Joubert

Minds, my mind and yours, are run by the same principles.  We are not unique.  We mirror what is around us.  If we walk into a red room, we become red.  If we are always in a group of angry people, it is hard not to become angry.  If we are with someone who is clear, our mind reflects that back and we become clearer.

— Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway

It was important to give myself permission to fail.  It is the only way to write.  We can’t live up to anyone’s high standards, including our own.

— Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind

And in fact I’m now asking an idle question of my own:  which is better — cheap happines, or lofty suffering?  Well, which is better?

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

I saw, of course, the cliff,

I saw the turbulent ocean blue:

But everyone else was going that way,

So I thought that I would too.

— Larry Lemming

Dreams

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

To dream the impossible dream,

to fight the unbeatable foe,

to bear with unbearable sorrow,

to run where the brave dare not go …

And I know if I’ll only be true

to this glorious quest

that my heart will lie peaceful and calm

when I’m laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this,

that one man scorned and covered with scars

still strove with his last ounce of courage

to reach the unreachable stars.

— Joe Darion, Man of la Mancha

Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than natural amelioration; knowledge is a viaticum; thinking is a primary necessity, and truth is nourishment, like wheat.  A reason fasting for knowledge and wisdom grows thin, and we must nurse minds that do not eat quite as much as stomachs.  If there be anything more poignant than a body pining away for want of bread, it is a mind that dies of hunger for enlightenment.

— Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

… Little religious feeling, yet has a reverence for life.  This is a spirit like a wavering flame which only needs care to burn high.  If this does not happen, she could lapse into the promiscuity and bitterness of the failed romantic.

— from the movie The Year of Living Dangerously

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished:  if you’re alive, it isn’t.

— Richard Bach, Illusions

We must honor our dragons, encourage them to be worthy destroyers, expect they’ll strive to cut us down …

— Richard Bach, Running from Safety

You live what they expect and you die from so what?  

Because you never chose your life, Dickie!  You never asked for change, you never asked what you loved and you never found it, you never hurled yourself into the world that mattered most to you, never fought dragons that you thought could eat you up, never inched yourself out on cliffsides clinging by the tips of your skill a thousand feet over destruction because your life was there …  Choose what you love and chase it top speed and I your future do solemnly promise that you will never die from so what!

— Richard Bach, Running from Safety

Shop for security over happiness and we buy it at that price.

— Richard Bach, Running from Safety

It was a meagre enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant margin for possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the frail audacious permanence of a bird’s nest built on the edge of a cliff – a mere wisp of leaves and straw, yet so put together that the lives entrusted to it may hang safely over the abyss.

— Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

Something there is in beauty

which grows in the sould of the beholder

like a flower:

fragile —

for many are the blights

which may waste

the beauty

or the beholder —

and imperishable —

for the beauty may die,

or the beholder may die,

or the world may die,

but the soul in which the flower grows

survives.

— Stephen R. Donaldson, Lord Foul’s Bane

“How beautiful the world is, and ow ugly labyrinths are,” I said relieved.

“How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths,” my master replied.

— Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

The universe … is a Ph. D. thesis that God was unable to successfully defend.

— James Morrow, Only Begotten Daughter

The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished:  they did not engender those beliefs, and they are powerless to destroy them …

— Marcel Proust, A la reserche du temps perdu

It is not that great ideas have been tried, and found inadequate; it is that they have been prejudged as inadequate, and never even tried.

— Richard Nelson Bolles, The 1995 What Color is your Parachute?

Most people don’t find their heart’s desire, because they decide to pursue just half their dream — and consequently they hunt for it with only half a heart.

— Richard Nelson Bolles, The 1995 What Color is your Parachute?

DESIDERATA

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.  As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.  Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.  Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit.  If you compare yourself with others you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.  Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.  Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.  Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.  But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strie for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.  Be yourself.  Especially do not feign affection.  Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.  Take kindly the counself of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.  Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.  But do not distress yourself with imaginings.  Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.  Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.  You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.  And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.  Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.  And whatever your labors and aspiratrions, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.  With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.  Be cheerful.  Strive to be happy.

— Max Ehrmann

Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself?  You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?  You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!

— J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

It is not in the nature of man — nor of any living entity — to start out by giving up, by spitting in one’s own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man.  Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it …  But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.

— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this:  that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

— G. K. Chesterton