Someday death will take us to another star.
Vincent van Gogh 1853 - 1890
1853 - 1890
Entire Collection
Technological possibilities are irresistible to man. If man can go to the moon, he will. If he can control the climate, he will.
John von Neumann 1903 - 1957
1903 - 1957
When cells are no longer needed, they die with what can only be called great dignity. They take down all the struts and buttresses that hold them together and quietly devour their component parts. The process is known as apoptosis or programmed cell death. Every day billions of your cells die for your benefit and billions of others clean up the mess. Cells can also die violently- for instance, when infected- but mostly they die because they are told to. Indeed, if not told to live- if not given some kind of active instruction from another cell- cells automatically kill themselves. Cells need a lot of reassurance. When, as occasionally happens, a cell fails to expire in the prescribed manner, but rather begins to divide and proliferate wildly, we call the result cancer. Cancer cells are really just confused cells. Cells make this mistake fairly regularly, but the body has elaborate mechanisms for dealing with it. It is only very rarely that the process spirals out of control. On average, humans suffer one fatal malignancy for each 100 million billion cell divisions. Cancer is bad luck in every possible sense of the term.
born 1951
A Short History of Nearly Everything
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Oscar Wilde 1854 - 1900
1854 - 1900
Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.
Voltaire 1694 - 1778
1694 - 1778
Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
Samuel Johnson 1709 - 1784
1709 - 1784
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 - 1900
1844 - 1900
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.
1903 - 1950
'Reflections on Gandhi', Partisan Review (January 1949)
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvellous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
Richard Feynman 1918 - 1988
1918 - 1988
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Samuel Johnson 1709 - 1784
1709 - 1784
Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever it has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?
Carl Sagan 1934 - 1996
1934 - 1996
It is wonderful how quickly you get used to things, even the most astonishing.
E. Nesbit 1858 - 1924
1858 - 1924
But the secret of intellectual excellence is the spirit of criticism ; it is intellectual independence. And this leads to difficulties which must prove insurmountable for any kind of authoritarianism. The authoritarian will in general select those who obey, who believe, who respond to his influence. But in doing so, he is bound to select mediocrities. For he excludes those who revolt, who doubt, who dare to resist his influence. Never can an authority admit that the intellectually courageous, i.e. those who dare to defy his authority, may be the most valuable type. Of course, the authorities will always remain convinced of their ability to detect initiative. But what they mean by this is only a quick grasp of their intentions, and they will remain for ever incapable of seeing the difference.
Karl Popper 1902 - 1994
1902 - 1994
I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.
Clarence Darrow 1857 - 1938
1857 - 1938
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
Albert Camus 1913 - 1960
1913 - 1960
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Richard Feynman 1918 - 1988
1918 - 1988
Art is the queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.
Leonardo da Vinci 1452 - 1519
1452 - 1519
Alliance, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Ambrose Bierce 1842 - 1914
Bierce, A. (1906). The cynic's word book. New York: Doubleday, Page, & Company.
1842 - 1914
Bierce, A. (1906). The cynic's word book. New York: Doubleday, Page, & Company.
You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.
Alan Watts 1915 - 1973
1915 - 1973
Not to have a national anthem would be logical.
1903 - 1950
As I Please (1943–1947)
Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.
Richard Feynman 1918 - 1988
1918 - 1988
You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.
William Ewart Gladstone 1809 - 1898
1809 - 1898
There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free if you truly wish to be.
Roald Dahl 1916 - 1990
1916 - 1990
What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.
Pablo Picasso 1881 - 1973
1881 - 1973
Big Brother is watching you.
George Orwell 1903 - 1950
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), part 1, ch. 1: the caption on the posters of Big Brother
1903 - 1950
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), part 1, ch. 1: the caption on the posters of Big Brother