The next era of awakening of human intellect may well produce a method
of understanding the qualitative content of equations. Today we
cannot. Today we cannot see that the water flow equations contain such
things as the barber pole structure of turbulence that one sees
between rotating cylinders. Today we cannot see whether
Schrodinger's equation contains frogs, musical composers or morality -
or whether it does not.
- Richard Feynman

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the
mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things
grow. But of course without the top you can't have the sides. It's the
top that defines the sides. So on we go...we have a long way to
go...no hurry.
- Robert Persig, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

Squareness may be defined succinctly and yet thoroughly as an
inability to see quality before it's been intellectually defined, that
is, before it gets all wrapped up into words.
- Robert Persig, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

For we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we
cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.
- Pericles, c. 430BC

Vi veri veniversum vicus vici.
(By the power of truth I, while living, have conquered the universe)
- Faust

How much does a person lack himself, who feels the need to have so
many things.
- Sen no Rikyu

Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.
(For knowledge, in itself is power)
- Francis Bacon

Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Silver Blaze

All sentient beings are created unequal. The best society provides
each with equal opportunity to float at his own level.
- Frank Herbert, The Dosadi experiment

Only a fool learns from experience: I learn from the experience of
others.
- Otto von Bismarck

It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so
poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be
real. Shibumi is understanding rather than knowledge. Articulate
silence. In demeanour, it is modesty without prudency. In poetry, it is
eloquent brevity. And in a man, it is ... what is it? Authority
without domination?
- Trevanian, Shibumi

One must pass through knowledge and arrive at simplicity.
- Trevanian, Shibumi

Go is to western chess what philosophy is to double-entry accounting.
- Trevanian, Shibumi

To find fault is easy; to do any better may be difficult.
- Plutarch

The only way to understand what mathematicians means by infinity is to
contemplate the extent of human stupidity.
- Voltaire

Children starve while boots costing thousands of dollars leave their
mark upon the surface of the moon. We have laboured long to build a
heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.
- Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen

or my own part, regret nothing, Have lived life, free from
compromise, and step into the shadow now without complaint.
- Rorschach, in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen

Every day I improve and grow better,
For I serve and adore the noblest lady
In the world - and I declare it openly.
I am hers from head to foot,
And, even if the cold winds blow,
The love that is reigning within my heart
Keeps me warm in the deepest winter.
- Arnaud Daniel

A politician's gratitude lasts roughly a fortnight.
- Walter Marshall (Lord Marshall of Goring and South Stoke)

If you think you are too small to make a difference,
try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito.
- African Proverb

Coming events cast their shadow before.
- Goethe

Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo!
facta est quasi vidua domina gentium.
How solitary lies the city filled with people!
It has become as a woman widowed, in the world.
- Dante, La Vita Nuova, canto XXVIII

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the centre hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes that make it useful.

Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 11

I have a friend who's an artist, and he's sometimes taken a view that
I don't agree with...He says, "You see, I as an artist can see how
beautiful this flower is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all
apart and it becomes a dull thing." And I think he's kind of nutty...I
might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is; but I can
appreciate the beauty of a flower, At the same time I see much more
about the flower than he sees...it's not just beauty at this dimension
of one centimetre, there's also beauty at a smaller dimension, the
inner structure. Also the processes, the fact that the colours in the
flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is quite
interesting -- it means that insects can see the colour...A
science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a
flower. It only adds; I don't understand how it subtracts.
- Richard Feynman

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they
are free.
- Goethe

A common mistake for people to make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete
fools.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

Res ipsa
(It speaks for itself)
- Anonymous

Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten
- B.F. Skinner

There is no occupation so sweet as scholarship; scholarship is the
means of making known to us, while still in this world, the infinity
of matter, the immense grandeur of Nature, the heavens, the lands and
the seas. Scholarship has taught us piety, moderation, greatness of
heart; it snatches our souls from darkness and shows them all things,
the high and the low, the first, the last and everything in between;
scholarship furnishes us with the means of living well and happily; it
teaches us how to spend our lives without discontent and without
vexation.
- Cicero, The Tusculan Disputations

Pascal is for building pyramids -- imposing, breathtaking, static
structures built by armies pushing heavy blocks into place. Lisp is
for building organisms -- imposing, breathtaking, dynamic structures
built by squads fitting fluctuating myriads of simpler organisms into
place. The organizing principles used are the same in both cases,
except for one extraordinarily important difference: The discretionary
exportable functionality entrusted to the individual Lisp programmer
is more than an order of magnitude greater than that to be found
within Pascal enterprises. Lisp programs inflate libraries with
functions whose utility transcends the application that produced
them. ... As a result the pyramid must stand unchanged for a
millennium; the organism must evolve or perish.
- Alan Perlis

Speak softly, and carry a big stick.
- Theodore Roosevelt

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.
- Basho

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whenever you say something to them
they translate it into their own language, and it immediately becomes
something entirely different.
- Goethe