Favorite Quotes

Peace of mind isn't at all superficial to technical work. Its the whole thing. That which produces it is good work and that which destroys it is bad work ... peace of mind ... has no direct relationship with circumstances. It can occur to a monk in meditation, to a soldier in heavy combat or to a machinist taking off that last ten-thousandth of an inch.
Robert M. Pirsig, in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

Our lovely blue planet, the Earth, is the only home we know ... Our intelligence and technology have given us the power to affect the climate ... will we think on longer time scales, with concern for our childen and our grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet? The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished.
Carl Sagan, in Cosmos

I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Etienne de Grellet

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest thing. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Stuart Mill

The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.
Robert Pirsig

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Fred Brooks

The country that draws a broad line between its fighting men and its thinking men will find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.
Sir William F. Butler

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave.
William Drummond

Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism;
the way you play it is free will.
Jawaharial Nehru

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.
Leo Tolstoy, On Life and Essays on Religion

A sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants to or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad ... if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid.
C. S. Lewis, on the subject of faith, in Mere Christianity

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
Fr. Alfred D'Souza

While anybody is free to approach a scientific inquiry in any fashion they choose, they cannot properly describe the methodology used as scientific, if they start with a conclusion and refuse to change it regardless of the evidence developed during the course of the investigation.
Judge William R. Overton (McLean v. Arkansas)

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.
Bertrand Russell

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher regard those who think alike than those who think differently.
Friedrich Nietzche

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
Carl Sagan, in Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; un-rewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
Calvin Coolidge

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei

In every child who is born, under no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again.
James Agee

Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble.
Arabic parable

Civilization is the encouragement of differences. Civilization thus becomes the synonym of democracy. Force, violence, pressure or compulsion, with a view to conformity, is both uncivilized and undemocratic.
Mohandas Gandhi

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Carl Sagan, in "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark"

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? Good God, we would also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill-fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
Franz Kafka

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexeplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series

My own suspicion is that the universe is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.
John Haldane

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Robert Heinlein, via fictional character Lazarus Long in "Time Enough for Love"

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punshiment and hope of reward after death.
Albert Einstein

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies you will not find another.
Carl Sagan in "Cosmos"

If I'd been born in my grandfather's time, I'd have made my grandfather's mistakes. Theres no doubt of it. I just don't want to make my grandfather's mistakes today.
Frank Herbert in "Maker of Dune"

Ecology is often confused with environmentalism, while in fact, environmentalism often leaves out the fact that people, too, can be a legitimate part of an ecosystem.
Frank Herbert in "Maker of Dune"

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
Henry Ford

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
Margaret Lee Runbeck

Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe.
John Milton

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
Marcus Aurelius

A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
Arthur C. Clarke

Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
Thomas Paine, in "The Age of Reason"

The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge; it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Charles Darwin The Descent of Man (1871)

You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time you must make it.
Charles Buxton

Most of us miss out on life's big prizes. The Pulitzer. The Nobel. Oscars. Tonys. Emmys. But we're all eligible for life's small pleasures. A pat on the back. A kiss behind the ear. A four-pound bass. A full moon. An empty parking space. A crackling fire. A great meal. A glorious sunset. Hot soup. Cold beer. Don't fret about copping life's grand awards. Enjoy its tiny delights. There are plenty for all of us.
published in the Wall Street Journal by United Technologies Corp. (whoever wrote these wise words deserves to be recognized!)

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it
Evelyn Beatrice Hall

...there is no poison on earth more potent, nor half so deadly, as a partial truth mixed with passion.
Michael Jay Tucker

"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 or 20 years from now she will come to me and say, 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'"
EFF staff counsel Mike Godwin, "Fear of Freedom: The Backlash Against Free Speech on the 'Net" at the Feb. 13 1995, Oakland, Calif. New Media Technology conference.

I'm not sure I want popular opinion on my side - I've noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts.
Bethania McKenstry

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Anatole France

The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.
Robert Heinlein on censorship.

In all things it is a good idea to hang a question mark now and then on the things we have taken for granted.
Bertrand Russell

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. They they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Martin Niemoeller, on the Nazi Holocaust

The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.
Hungarian proverb

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
Montaigne

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide