Learning never exhausts the mind.
Leonardo da Vinci 1452 - 1519
1452 - 1519
Entire Collection
It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.
Voltaire 1694 - 1778
1694 - 1778
We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
Jean de La Bruyère 1645 - 1696
1645 - 1696
Pure mathematics… seems to me a rock on which all idealism founders: 317 is a prime, not because we think it is, or because our minds are shaped one way rather than another, but because it is, because mathematical reality is built that way.
G. H. Hardy 1877 - 1947
1877 - 1947
Humans are good at discerning subtle patterns that are really there, but equally so at imagining them when they are altogether absent.
1934 - 1996
Contact (1985)
He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done.
Leonardo da Vinci 1452 - 1519
1452 - 1519
Lenin was right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
John Maynard Keynes 1883 - 1946
1883 - 1946
I'm not an animal lover if that means you think things are nice if you can pat them, but I am intoxicated by animals.
David Attenborough born 1926
born 1926
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defence of religion is full of such logical imbecilities. The theologians, taking one with another, are adept logicians, but every now and then they have to resort to sophistries so obvious that their whole case takes on an air of the ridiculous. Even the most logical religion starts out with patently false assumptions. It is often argued in support of this or that one that men are so devoted to it that they are willing to die for it. That, of course, is as silly as the Santa Claus proof. Other men are just as devoted to manifestly false religions, and just as willing to die for them. Every theologian spends a large part of his time and energy trying to prove that religions for which multitudes of honest men have fought and died are false, wicked, and against God.
1880 - 1956
Minority Report
The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts.
Charles Darwin 1809 - 1882
1809 - 1882
Respect yourself above all.
Pythagoras c. 570 - c. 495 BC
c. 570 - c. 495 BC
The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick.
1856 - 1919
The Wizard of Oz Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
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
But what is Freedom? Rightly understood, a universal licence to be good.
Hartley Coleridge 1796 - 1849
1796 - 1849
A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Leonardo da Vinci 1452 - 1519
1452 - 1519
I... a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.
Richard Feynman 1918 - 1988
1918 - 1988
Given that the things and events are invariably entertained from one perspective or another, they are always unique. And the radical temporality of experience that will neither be arrested or denied guarantees that all attempts to theorise about these events, while often of contingent value, will ultimately be outrun by the processive character of experience.
Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation
Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation
The longer I live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed suddenly into magnificent sense.
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 - 1926
1875 - 1926
There is no reason that the universe should be designed for our convenience.
John D. Barrow 1952 - 2020
1952 - 2020
Ain't he ugly? He's too ugly to be world champ.
1942 - 2016
On Sonny Liston
Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick.
1915 - 1973
Watts, A. (1977). The essential Alan Watts. Berkeley, Calif.: Celestial Arts.
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
W. H. Auden 1907 - 1973
1907 - 1973
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Pigmentation was a quick and convenient way of judging a person. One of us, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once proposed we instead judge people by the content of their character. He was shot.
Jon Stewart born 1962
born 1962
I think Terrell will catch hell at the sound of the bell. He's going around saying that he's a championship-fighter, but when he meets me he fall 20 pound lighter. He thinks that he's the real heavy weight champ but when he meets me, he'll just be a tramp Now I'm not sayin' just to be funny, but I'm fightin' Ernie because he needs the money.
Muhammad Ali 1942 - 2016
1942 - 2016