Sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is music wherever there is harmony, order and proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. - Sir Thomas Browne I can't see the point in the theatre. All that sex and violence. I get enough of that at home. Apart from the sex, of course. - Baldrick - Sense and Senility Someone once said that the two most important things in developing taste were sensitivity and intelligence. I don't think this is so; I'd rather call them curiosity and courage. Curiosity to look for the new and the hidden; courage to develop your own tastes regardless of what others might say or think. - R. Murray Schafer The more we study mind and matter scientifically the more we see that all things follow a natural sequence, a sequence as liable to work for our disadvantage as for our advantage. It flows like the water of a river, it falls like rain, it is as impartial as the sea. It is as innocent of malice as it is of compassion. - Llewelyn Powys - The Pathetic Fallacy My house is small, but you are learned men / And by your arguments can make a place / Twenty foot broad as infinite as space. - Chaucer - The Reeve's Tale America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there. - Laurence J. Peter There's certainly a growing atmosphere of academic totalitarianism. It shows up in things like the attacks on the legitimacy of the more eclectic and interdisciplinary fields, or in the increasing constraints on student choice. - Tom Naylor Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books. - Francis Bacon We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within. - Stephen Jay Gould Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. - Marie Curie You have perhaps heard the story of the four students-- British, French, American, Canadian-- who were asked to write an essay on elephants. The British student entitled his essay "Elephants and the Empire." The French student called his "Love and the Elephant." The title of the American student's essay was "Bigger and Better Elephants," and the Canadian student called his "Elephants: A Federal or Provincial Responsibility?" - Robert H. Winters The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work. - John Von Neumann The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, / And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, / Awaits alike th' inevitable hour: / The paths of glory lead but to the grave. - Thomas Gray God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world. - Paul Dirac Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid. - Jules Feiffer Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student. - George Iles What can I wish to the youth of my country who devote themselves to science? . . . Thirdly, passion. Remember that science demands from a man all his life. If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be passionate in your work and in your searching. - Ivan Pavlov The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. - Ralph W. Sockman I imagine if you had built the Newton Memorial outside Paris . . . it would have undoubtedly shown the violence of 1870 and 1914 and 1942 and 1945 -- even 1968! Consider building a vast cube of stone merely to register the effects of violence -- marked and dated as an indictment. - Peter Greenaway - Dear Boullee Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly. - Arnold Edinborough Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him. - Paul Eldridge There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. - C.A.R. Hoare Things are not as bad as they seem. They are worse. - Bill Press I am afraid of the worst, but I am not sure what that is. - Abraham Rotstein Ideally, you should be your own hero, just as I am mine. - Bargepole A living entity that regarded its means of survival as evil, would not survive. A plant that struggled to mangle its roots, a bird that fought to break its wings would not remain for long in the existence they affronted. But the history of man has been a struggle to deny and destroy his mind. - Ayn Rand I have seen the future and it doesn't work. - Robert Fulford . . . one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. - Albert Einstein Accountant (Graham) Oh well, I'm a chartered accountant, and consequently too boring to be of interest. - Monty Python - Sex and Violence The most extensive computation known has been conducted over the last billion years on a planet-wide scale: it is the evolution of life. The power of this computation is illustrated by the complexity and beauty of its crowning achievement, the human brain. - David Rogers - Weather Prediction Using a Genetic Memory Planet Bog-- Pools of toxic chemicals bubble under a choking atmosphere of poisonous gases... but aside from that, it's not much like Earth. - Bill Watterson - The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies. - Dalton Camp I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. . . But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming-- and a little mad. - Alfred North Whitehead Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. . . luckily, it's not difficult. - Charlotte Whitton . . . no man of genuinely superior intelligence has even been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night. - H.L. Mencken - The Allied Arts Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything. - Sydney Smith K is for Kenghis Khan. _He_ was a very _nice_ person. History has no record of him. There is a moral in that, somewhere. - Harlan Ellison - From A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet I want to know the truth, however perverted that may sound. - Stephen Wolfram It is unnecessary to understand electromagnetic theory before wiring a lamp or to study physics in order to repair a pump. We count on our fingers and give no heed to the proliferating implications of the act. - James R. Newman [He] . . . was a letter writer of the type that is now completely extinct. His circle of correspondents was perhaps no larger but it was easily more bewildered than that of any other American of his generation. . . - James Thurber In Einstein's theory of relativity the observer is a man who sets out in quest of truth armed with a measuring-rod. In quantum theory he sets out with a sieve. - Sir Arthur Eddington I'm lost, but I'm making record time. - Allan Lamport Cartesian, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, _Cogito ergo sum_. . . The dictum might be improved, however, thus: _Cogito cogito _ _ergo cogito sum_--"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am"; as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made. - Ambrose Bierce - The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy. - John Dewey Paper has a genius for multiplication that cannot be equalled anywhere else in nature. - Hugh Keenleyside The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music. - Donald E. Knuth There is a difference between art and life and that difference is readability. - Marian Engel Surely where there's smoke there's fire? No, where there's so much smoke there's smoke. - John A. Wheeler Our view. . . is that it is an essential characteristic of experimentation that it is carried out with limited resources, and an essential part of the subject of experimental design to ascertain how these should be best applied; or, in particular, to which causes of disturbance care should be given, and which ought to be deliberately ignored. - Sir Ronald A. Fisher The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible. - Albert Einstein We should have had socialism already, but for the socialists. - George Bernard Shaw It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle By undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct. - E.A. Poe - The Murders in the Rue Morgue It's an experience like no other experience I can describe, the best thing that can happen to a scientist, realizing that something that's happened in his or her mind exactly corresponds to something that happens in nature. It's startling every time it occurs. One is surprised that a construct of one's own mind can actually be realized in the honest-to-goodness world out there. A great shock, and a great, great joy. - Leo Kadanoff I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top. - Frank Moore Colby Everyone is as God has made him, and oftentimes a great deal worse. - Miguel De Cervantes He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. - Edmund Burke There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities-- potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry-- that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics. - Gregory Benford - Timescape I could never sleep my way to the top / 'Cause my alarm clock always wakes me right up. - They Might Be Giants - Hey, Mr D.J., I Thought You Said We Had a Deal One grows tired of jelly babies, Castellan. One grows tired of almost everything, Castellan, except power. - The Doctor - The Invasion of Time No matter how hard you try, there is always going to be someone more underground than you. - Robert Fulford Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work. - Pliny The Elder Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves. - Rudyard Kipling Somehow the wondrous promise of the earth is that there are things beautiful in it, things wondrous and alluring, and by virtue of your trade you want to understand them. - Mitchell Feigenbaum It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequence of discoveries, and these are to be seen nowhere more conspicuously than in those three which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely, printing, gunpowder and the magnet [i.e. Mariner's Needle]. For these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world. - Francis Bacon And if you give us any more trouble I shall visit you in the small hours and put a bat up your nightdress. - Basil Fawlty - Mrs. Richards Predicting the future, as we all know, is risky. Predicting the evolution of new technology is downright hazardous. - Leon Cooper An apprentice carpenter may want only a hammer and saw, but a master craftsman employs many precision tools. Computer programming likewise requires sophisticated tools to cope with the complexity of real applications, and only practice with these tools will build skill in their use. - Robert L. Kruse - Data Structures and Program Design If you want something done properly, kill Baldrick before you start. - Edmund Blackadder - Dish and Dishonesty 1) A strong belief is more important than a few facts. 2) The stronger the belief, the fewer the facts. 3) The fewer the facts, the more people killed. - Milton Rothman 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 Life at the top is financially rewarding, spiritually draining, physically exhausting, and short. - Peter C. Newman My specific goal is to revolutionize the future of the species. Mathematics is just another way of predicting the future. - Ralph Abraham There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. - Charles Darwin All things are difficult before they are easy. - Thomas Fuller Very little is known about the War of 1812 because the Americans lost it. - Eric Nicol It is strange that we know so little about the properties of numbers. They are our handiwork, yet they baffle us; we can fathom only a few of their intricacies. Having defined their attributes and prescribed their behaviour, we are hard pressed to perceive the implications of our formulas. - James R. Newman And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps. - H.L. Mencken Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. - Alan Turing Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent. - Pierre Trudeau The Cross is a gibbet-- rather an odd thing to make use of as a talisman against bad luck, if that is how we regard it. Or is it, instead, a cynical reminder that Virtue usually gets pilloried whenever it makes one of its occasional appearances in this world? - Denis Johnston - The Brazen Horn Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, / But Genius must be born; and can never be taught. - John Congreve The more efficient computers become at inducing new knowledge, the more widely that knowledge will be applied, even in matters of life and death. It is essential that such knowledge be open to inspection. This means that designers of learning systems have a public duty to use comprehensible description languages-- even if that means sacrificing performance. Otherwise we run the risk of generating truly "unknowable knowledge." - Richard Forsyth - Machine Learning for Expert Systems Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes, believe me, but things vary, and adopt a new form. The phrase "being born" is used for beginning to be something different from what one was before, while "dying" means ceasing to be the same. Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this, yet the sums of things remains unchanged. - Ovid - Metamorphoses You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it. - Charles Haddon Spurgeon It may be that a genius of the so-called universal type-- an Aristotle, for example, or a Leibniz or a Leonardo da Vinci-- is one whose mind has the group property. - Cassius J. Keyser Truth I have no trouble with, it's the facts I get all screwed up. - Farley Mowat "Doctor, we did good, didn't we?" "Perhaps. Time will tell. Always does." - Ace and The Doctor - Remembrance of the Daleks The true poet and the true scientist are not estranged. They go forth into nature like two friends. Behold them strolling through the summer fields and woods. The younger of the two is much the more active and inquiring; he is ever and anon stepping aside to examine some object more minutely, plucking a flower, treasuring a shell, pursuing a bird, watching a butterfly; now he turns over a stone, peers into the marshes, chips off a fragment of rock, and everywhere seems intent on some special and particular knowledge of the things about him. The elder man has more an air of leisurely contemplation and enjoyment, is less curious about special objects and features, and more desirous of putting himself in harmony with the spirit of the whole. But when his younger companion has any fresh and characteristic bit of information to impart to him, how attentively he listens, how sure and discriminating is his appreciation! The interests of the two in the universe are widely different, yet in no true sense are they hostile or mutually destructive. - John Burroughs