Some favorite quotes

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

  • Mathematics is the gate and key of the sciences. ... Neglect of mathematics works injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or the things of this world. And what is worse, men who are thus ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance and so do not seek a remedy. ((Roger Bacon (ca. 1214- ca. 1294), Opus Majus)

  • Doing mathematics and exploring a dark mansion: "You enter the first room of the mansion and its completely dark. You stumble around bumping into the furniture but gradually you learn where each piece of furniture is. Finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch, you turn it on, and suddenly its all illuminated. You can see exactly where you were. Then you move into the next room and spend another six months in the dark. So each of these breakthroughs, while sometimes theyre momentary, sometimes over a period of a day or two, they are the culmination of, and couldnt exist without, the many months of stumbling around in the dark that precede them." (Andrew Wiles)

  • 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)
  • 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 the words of mice and men, the saddest are `It might have been.' (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)

  • 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)

  • 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)
  • 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 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)

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

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

  • 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)

  • May you live in interesting times. (Chinese curse)

  • The Messiah will only come when he is no longer needed. (Franz Kafka)
  • God does not play dice with the universe (Albert Einstein)

  • 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)

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

  • 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).
  • Physicists defer only to the mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God, although you may be hard-pressed to find a mathematician that modest." (Leon Lederman)

  • Mathematicians can never leave well enough alone -- what if this, what if that? .. You never get to the end of anything. (Sarah Flannery Mom)

  • It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. (Confucius)

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

  • Focus on the task at hand: If you don't accomplish the here-and-now, then the future outcomes may not be what you want. (Tiger Woods)
  • (from my children-September 2007) The Happiness Cake: Ingredients: 4 cups of love, 2 cups of loyalty, 1 cup of friendship, 1 cup of respect, 2 spoons of hope, 2 spoons of hope, 2 spoons of tenderness, 1 spoon of faith, 1 barrel of joy. This is how it is made: Mix love and loyalty together with hope and tenderness. Add hope and friendship and shake it in a barrel of full of joy. Cook the mixture under the the sun and serve it generously to your loved ones everyday with the respect.