Scientific research: the only sort of poetry that is state supported. -- Jean Rostand

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite. -- Paul Dirac (1902-1984)

Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated. -- M. C. Reed

It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that. --G. H. Hardy

And one of the most important truths I've learned is that where there are crowds there is stupidity. When large numbers of people get together, stupid things happen, and you're almost always better off simply getting as far away from the crowd as possible. -- BikeSnob NYC

As E.M. Forster so brilliantly put it, 'It is difficult, after accepting six cups of tea, to throw the seventh in the face of your hostess.' Sometimes the only way to live is to get out, or at least seriously contemplate getting out, doing the impossible, flinging the conventional tea. -- Carolyn Gold Heilbrun

I had always been aware that the Universe is sad; everything in it, animate or inanimate, the wild creatures, the stones, the stars, was enveloped in the great sadness, pervaded by it. ... Never then or now have I been able to look at a cloudless sky at night and see beauty there. A kind of grandeur, yes -- but not beauty. The profusion and variety of celestial lights have always frightened me. Why are they there? Why these instead of others? Why these instead of nothing? -- Hayden Carruth (American poet, 1921-2008)

Das Leben kann sehr kurz sein wenn man sich auf zu wenig Dinge konzentriert. -- Friedrich Liechtenstein, Bad Gastein

If you decide you don't have to get A's, you can learn an enormous amount in college. -- I. I. Rabi.

I say if yer heart don't break once a day, it shows a lack of imagination. -- Lefty, Praire Home Companion

It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom, to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed, and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations. -- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

Man's destiny is to know, if only because societies with knowledge culturally dominate societies that lack it. Luddites and anti-intellectuals do not master the differential equations of thermodynamics or the biochemical cures of illness. They stay in thatched huts and die young. -- Edward O. Wilson

Do them for the fun of it ... What one fool can do, so can another, and the fact that some other fool beat you to it shouldn't disturb you: you should get a kick out of having discovered something. -- Richard Feyman "Feynman Lectures on Computation"

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. -- Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian theoretical physicist

I supply the much-needed 'don't know-how'. -- Stanislaw Ulam, Polish-American mathematician

Thinking is my fighting. -- Virginia Woolf in 1940. (p. 159, Out of the Cage)

To create real confusion, it takes thinking. -- Professor Robert Gunning, Real Analysis Lecture 11/11/02

That's the cause of much misery in the modern world. Too many real numbers. -- Professor Robert Gunning, Real Analysis Lecture 11/15/02

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing. -- Gertrude Stein

If I could prove by logic that you would die in five minutes, I should be sorry you were going to die, but my sorrow would be very much mitigated by pleasure in the proof. -- G.H. Hardy to Bertrand Russell

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. -- Isaac Asimov

Science is the organised scepticism in the reliability of expert opinion. -- Richard Feyman

As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office. -- Molly Ivins

A formative influence on my undergraduate self was the response of a respected elder statesmen of the Oxford Zoology Department when an American visitor had just publicly disproved his favourite theory. The old man strode to the front of the lecture hall, shook the American warmly by the hand and declared in ringing, emotional tones: "My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years." And we clapped our hands red. Can you imagine a Government Minister being cheered in the House of Commons for a similar admission? "Resign, Resign" is a much more likely response! -- Richard Dawkins

For example, by mountain biking I've learned from my tendency to ride around obstacles instead of over them and from my technique of stopping, dismounting, and visually inspecting drop-offs before riding off of them that I am both lazy and cowardly. I've also learned by being dropped from races and rides of all kinds that I don't like it when things get difficult, and that no matter what you're doing you can always quit. And that is a beautiful lesson. Knowing that life itself is optional is the key to getting through it. -- BikeSnob NYC

The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging. -- Molly Ivins

You have lost a good opportunity to shut up. --Sarkozy to Cameron, Dec 2011, over the Euro crisis

Heim kommt man nie. Aber wo befreundete Wege zusammenlaufen, da sieht die ganze Welt fuer eine Stunde wie Heimat aus. -- Hermann Hesse, Demian

Die Geliebte, die wir verlassen, der Freund von dem wir uns trennen mussten, verloren sind beide fuer uns auf immer! Die, die wir vielleicht nach Jahren wiedersehen, sind nicht mehr dieselben, von denen wir schieden, und sie finden ja auch uns nicht mehr wieder! -- E. T. A. Hoffmann, Serapionsbrueder, Erster Band der Erzaehlungen und Maerchen

Skolans uppgift är som sig bör att skola arbetskraften-- Ebba Grö, Staten och kapitalet

I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults. -- Molly Ivins

All right, all right, so I love Lubbock. I never claimed to have exquisite taste. I'll be there with the diehards to the end, trying to explain, "No, this is a griddle with some Monopoly houses on it: this is Lubbock." Still, the life of all us Lubbock-lovers would be a lot easier if the Chamber of Commerce hadn't adopted the slogan "Keep Lubbock Beautiful." Keep? -- Molly Ivins

I want to support young girls who are in their 20s now and tell them: You're not just imagining things. It's tough. Everything that a guy says once, you have to say five times. -- Bjork

Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small. -- Laurence Peter, "Peter's Theory of Entrepreneurial Aggressiveness in Higher Education," Peter's People 1979

You get yourself the right pair of trousers and people will remember you for years afterwards -- Chet Atkins, Praire Home Companion

On the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics. -- Richard Feyman, after an introduction mentioning that he played bongo drums;Messenger Lectures at Cornell University (1964-5).