~ PERCEIVING THE WORLD ~
“Doveryay, no proveryay.”
Russian Proverb, whose translation is “Trust, but verify.”
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesnt go away.”
Philip K. Dick
“E pur si muove.”
["It still moves."]
Galileo Galilei, muttering under his breath at Inquisition, after he had publicly recanted his position on Earth’s movement
“A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.”
Edmond de Concourt
“I don’t believe there’s anything unnatural. I don’t believe chemicals are unnatural. .. It’s very simple we don’t invent molecules, compounds. They’re here, they’re in the universe. We reorganize things, we change them around, but we don’t make anything unnatural. Now we can create bad impacts, we can poison ourselves, we can poison the Earth, but that’s just the natural outcome of the mistake we made.”
Barry Schuler
“You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
“What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness.”
M. C. Escher
“There is nothing so horrible in nature as to see a beautiful theory murdered by an ugly gang of facts.”
Benjamin Franklin
“Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature cannot be fooled.”
Richard P. Feynman
“You judge me but you don’t know me. You will drown in your own hypocrisy before you realize I speak the truth.”
Ben Ewing
~ SELF PERCEPTION ~
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“I know not what I appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore.”
Sir Isaac Newton
“Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.”
Stanislaw J. Lec
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
Abraham Maslow
“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh, 1849
“If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.”
Marcus Aurelius
~ UNDERSTANDING ~
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
“The essence of wisdom is to remain suspicious of what you want to be true.”
John K. Hart
“Keep the company of those who seek the truth, and run from those who have found it.”
Vaclav Havel
“What I cannot create, I cannot understand.”
Richard P. Feynman
“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.”
Emile Chartier
“94% of life on Earth is aquatic. I am embarrassed to call our planet Earth. It’s an ocean planet.”
Graham Hawkes, inventor of a submarine that flies like a plane underwater
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Hamlet, Hamlet, by W. Shakespeare
“There are only two problems in life: (1) you know what you want, and you don’t know how to get it; and/or (2) you don’t know what you want.”
Steven Snyder
“Careful. We don’t want to learn from this.”
Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes
“In the immortal words of Socrates: ‘I drank what?’ ”
Chris Knight, Real Genius (movie)
“I have not seen what I have just seen. I do not believe what I believe, lord. These are magical, unexplainable matters, and I beg you not to make me a part of them.”
Phillipe “the mouse” Gaston, Ladyhawke (movie)
“In any event, this library [main library of Alexandria] was burned out by the Romans when they were adding Egypt to their empire. Or maybe it wasn’t. It’s inherently difficult to get reliable information about an event that consisted of the destruction of all recorded information.”
Neal Stephenson, “Mother Earth Mother Board”, Wired Magazine, 1996
“If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can’t be done.”
Peter Ustinov
“Let me just give you a little advice. Son, a fool with a plan can beat a genius with no plan. And what we’re afraid of is, what your mother and I are afraid of, is that we have a son who is a fool with no plan.”
Thomas Boone Pickens Sr., to his son, who had switched from a medical major to a business major, and wasn’t doing particularly good in either. His son, T. Boone Pickens, went on to have a famous business career
~ VALUES ~
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Steve Jobs
“When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad; and that is my religion.”
Abraham Lincoln
“I do not approve of a word you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Voltaire
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”
Frederick Douglass
“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”
Dalai Lama
“A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received.”
Albert Einstein
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
Abraham Lincoln
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“We do not realize how large a part of our law is open to reconsideration upon a slight change in the habit of the public mind.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Path of the Law (1897)
“Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There’s a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?”
Charlie Munger
“If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?”
Steven Wright
~ WILLPOWER ~
“Beneath every no / lays a passion for yes that had never been broken.”
Wallace Stevens, Esthatique du Mal
“Beware of the fury of the patient man.”
John Dryden
“If you don’t control your mind, someone else will.”
John Allston
“I was drowning my sorrows, but my sorrows, they learned how to swim.”
U2, Until The End of the World, Actung Baby
“I feel myself driven towards an end that I do not know. As soon as I shall have reached it, as soon as I shall become unnecessary, an atom will suffice to shatter me. Till then, not all the forces of mankind can do anything against me.”
Napoleon Bonaparte, at the opening of the Russian campaign
“Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
Goethe
“Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
Helen Keller, The Open Door, 1957
“War is at its best barbarism… Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.”
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
“I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.”
Anonymous (although sometimes attributed to George W. Bush)
“Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It’s good that we have museums to document them.”
Bill Gates, at the Computer History Museum (former headquarters of SGI)
“Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds awake to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of day are dangerous men, that they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible.”
T. E. Lawrence, of Arabia
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain
“I don’t think there’s some magic trick here. I think I’ve got a good nose for talent, so I hire really good people. And I’ve got a pretty healthy ego, so I’m not scared of hiring the smartest people, even when they’re smarter than me. And I have a low tolerance of nonsense and turf battles and game-playing, and I send that message very clearly. And so over time, I think, people start trusting each other, and they stay focused on mission, as opposed to personal ambition or grievance. If you’ve got really smart people who are all focused on the same mission, then usually you can get some things done.”
Barack Obama, on leadership
“Talk does not cook rice.”
Chinese proverb
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won’t.”
Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
“No more tears now. I will think about revenge.”
Mary Queen of Scots
“Wanted. Men for hazardous journey. Low wages. Bitter cold. Long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in the event of success.”
Ernest Shackleton’s 1907 ad in London’s Times, recruiting a crew to sail with him on his exploration of the South Pole
~ GREAT AND TERRIBLE PREDICTIONS ~
“There is no question about it. In the next 40 years a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother has.”
Robert F. Kennedy (stated in 1961, when Robert was Attorney General, and while his brother John was President)
“[According to Steve Jobs] Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company. This was a lunatic plan. High tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.”
John Sculley, CEO of Apple from 1983 to 1993, incorrectly understanding the potential of Apple, as stated in his 1987 memoir “Odyssey”
