------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. ---Shakespeare ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With my two algorithms, one can solve all problems---without error, if God will! ---Kitab Al-muntasar fi hisab al-gabrw'almuqabalan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mellow and affectionate, yet with spunk. ---The Hite Report ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When you argue with a fool, chances are he is doing just the same. ---Unknown (at least to me) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FINGER the guy. He's a Fortran man with a politically-correct plan. ---From a debate on USENET ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Old statisticians never die, they just get broken down by age and sex. ---Unknown (at least to me) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If the human race is ever invited to join the Galactic Federation, under 'significant achievements' on the membership form, you will find: -fire -wheel -J.S. Bach -Fortran -Silly Putty Good enuf for yeh? Then harken ye to Glass' Theorem: "On any planet where a High-Level language is invented, the very first one to be of any use whatsoever will become immortal, outliving races, civilizations, and species. On -THIS- planet, that language is Fortran." ---seen in comp.lang.fortran ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated. ---Poul Anderson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A biophysicist talks physics to the biologists and biology to the physicists, but when he meets another biophysicist, they just discuss women. ---Anonymous ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The three laws of thermodynamics: 1) you can't win 2) you can't break even 3) you can't even get out of the game. ---Anonymous ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A neurotic is a man who builds castles in the air; a psychotic is one who tries to live in them, and the psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent. ---Anonymous ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The body is most fully developed [at] from thirty to thirty-five years of age, the mind at about forty-nine. ---Aristotle ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all. ---Charles Babbage ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books. ---Francis Bacon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man. ---Francis Bacon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion. ---Francis Bacon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves. ---Shakespeare ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. ---Francis Bacon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What is now proved was once only imagined. ---William Blake ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Life] is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. ---Shakespeare ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Facts are chiels that winna ding, an; downa be disputed. ---Robert Burns ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Intelligence is almost useless to the person whose only quality it is. ---Alexis Carrel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What I tell you three times is true. ---Lewis Carroll ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time is defined so that motion looks simple. ---J. A. Wheeler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I believe there are 15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,181,555,468,044,717, 914,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons. ---A. S. Eddington ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. ---Martin Rees ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is likely that before life has expanded to cover more than one-half the universe, the contraction will have begun. ---J. D. Barrow & F. J. Tipler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We haven't the money, so we've got to think. ---Ernest Rutherford ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars. ---Oscar Wilde ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Somewhat fatigued with the opera, I went behind the scenes to look at the mechanism. ---Charles Babbage ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To understand a science it is necessary to know its history. ---Auguste Comte ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Learning without thinking is useless. Thinking without learning is dangerous. ---Confucius ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One cannot conceive of anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another. ---Cicero ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...it is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment. ---Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. ---Arthur Conan Doyle [Sherlock Holmes in THE SIGN OF FOUR] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. ---Arthur Conan Doyle [Sherlock Holmes in A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method. ---Arthur Conan Doyle [Sherlock Holmes to Watson in A CASE OF IDENTITY] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory. ---Arthur Stanley Eddington ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't fear computers; I fear the lack of them. ---Isaac Asimov ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant. ---Manfred Eigen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is the character. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our age is characterised by perfecting the means, while confusing the goals. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I study philosophical works I feel I am swallowing something which I don't have in my mouth. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The human mind has first to construct forms, independently, before we can find them in things. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I learned many years ago never to waste time trying to convince my colleagues. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marvellous, what ideas the young people have these days. But I don't believe a word of it. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. ---Ralph Waldo Emerson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. ---Ralph Waldo Emerson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Without analysis, no synthesis. ---Friedrich Engels ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reporter (to the Beatles): What do you boys think of topless bathing suits? Ringo (straight-faced): We've been wearing them for years. ---from a press conference ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Work, finish, publish. ---Michael Faraday ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level. ---Enrico Fermi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An optimist thinks this is the best of all worlds. A pessimist fears the same may be true. ---Doug Larson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. ---Galileo Galilei ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Whenever you can, count. ---Francis Galton ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them. ---Karl Friedrich Gauss ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One of the principle objects of theoretical research in my department of knowledge is to find the point of view from which the subject appears in its greatest simplicity. ---Josiah Willard Gibbs ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Look for knowledge not in books but in things themselves. ---William Gilbert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- God pity a one-dream man. ---Robert Goddard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action. ---Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Never let your morals prevent you from doing what's right. ---Isaac Asimov ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Things are as they are because they were as they were. ---Thomas Gold ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The discovery of appropriate variables for biology is itself an act of creation. ---Brian Carey Goodwin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A man does not attain the status of Galileo merely because he is persecuted; he must also be right. ---Stephen Jay Gould ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eleventh law of librarianship: The value of rubbish is unaltered by translation, abstraction or citation. ---Dennis Gunton ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thirteenth law of librarianship: Anyone who can be replaced by a machine deserves to be. ---Dennis Gunton ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Man creates God in his own image. ---Ernst Heinrich Haeckel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. ---John Burdon Sanderson Haldane ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have never done anything useful. ---Godfrey Harold Hardy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers. ---S. J. Harris ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- God not only plays dice. He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen. ---Stephen William Hawking ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. ---??? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Science owes more to the steam engine than the steam engine owes to science. ---L. J. Henderson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Physics is much too hard for physicists. ---David Hilbert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future. ---Hippocrates of Cos ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years. ---Adolf Hitler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hofstadters's law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law. ---Douglas R. Hofstadter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't see the logic of rejecting data just because they seem incredible. ---Fred Hoyle ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Try to learn something about everything and everything about something. ---Thomas Henry Huxley ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The significance of round numbers is exaggerated in the extreme, especially by the mystics and the irrational. ---Ed Seiler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. ---Bertrand Russell ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On my shelves now, collections of aphorisms sit like containers of radioactive material. ---Clive Vivian Leopold James ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are lies, damn lies, and open systems. ---??? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The purpose of models is not to fit the data but to sharpen the questions. ---Samuel Carlin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ubi materia, ibi geometria ---Johannes Kepler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A first-rate theory predicts; a second-rate theory forbids and a third-rate theory explains after the event. ---Aleksander Isaakovich Kitaigorodskii ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Visiting Americans often think that the tea and coffee breaks are a waste of time but some of them learn better. ---Aaron Klug ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The understanding of atomic physics is child's play compared with the understanding of child's play. ---David Kresch ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To live is to war with trolls. ---Henrik Ibsen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A signature isn't a return address, it is the ASCII equivalent of a black velvet clown painting; it's a rectangle of carets surrounding a quote from a literary giant of weeniedom like Heinlein or Dr. Who. ---Chris Maeda ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But even if it could be proved beyond doubt that Newton was the leading whoremonger of London, the immensity of his impact on the modern intellect would remain unaltered. ---Richard Westfall ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I feign no hypotheses...And to us it is enough that gravity does really exist, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea. ---Isaac Newton ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. ---Bertrand Russell ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Random number generators are like sex: even the bad ones are still pretty good. ---G. Marsaglia ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The PC has bred anarchy. Hardware, software, and peripherals have been thrown together in random configurations at the whim of any employee with access to an expense voucher and computer catalogue. The result has been a financial and administrative night mare for corporations. ---Ken Olsen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software. ---Arthur C. Clarke ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ... [that] was all right as far as it went; the trouble was, it just didn't go anywhere. ---Robert M. Pirsig ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You're ignoring Leichter's First Law of Computing: If you don't know how to do something, you don't know how to do it on a computer. ---Jerry Leichter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hardware is ephemeral; software is massively inertial. ---David Wallace ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. ---Howard Aiken ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think there's a world market for about five computers. ---Thomas J Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It doesn't do to leave a live Dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. ---J.R.R. Tolkien ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. ---Steven R. Covey ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What if there weren't any hypothetical situations? ---??? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I do not define time, space, place and motion, as being well known to all. ---Isaac Newton ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once in a great while the temptation to be REALLY DIRTY is just irresistible. ---W. H. Press, S. A. Teukolsky, W. T. Vetterling & B. P. Flannery ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I do not know. ---Joseph Louis Lagrange [summarising his life's work] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue. ---Leonardo da Vinci ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Every statement in physics has to state relations between observable quantities. ---Ernst Mach ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth. ---Thomas Mann ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you see a formula in the PHYSICAL REVIEW that extends over a quarter of a page, forget it. It's wrong. Nature isn't that complicated. ---Bernd T. Matthias ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Physics is simple only when analysed locally. ---Misner, Thorne & Wheeler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Physics, beware of metaphysics. ---Isaac Newton ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I know not what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. ---Isaac Newton ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To describe the universe in terms of our present knowledge is to say almost nothing about everything. ---Engelbert Schücking ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. ---M. Palin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Space and time are not conditions in which we live, but modes in which we think. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All primes are odd except 2, which is the oddest of all. ---D. E. Knuth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- They came first for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I was not a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I was not 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is nothing to it: You only have to hit the right note at the right time, and the instrument plays itself. ---Johann Sebastian Bach ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the field of observation, chance only favours those minds which have been prepared. ---Louis Pasteur ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. ---Robert M. Pirsig ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- `You damn sadist,' said mr cummings, `you try to make people think.' ---Ezra Pound ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are in big trouble when you start writing software to impress girls. ---Bruce Ellis, THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO VMS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I possess every good quality, but the one that distinguishes me above all is modesty. ---Charles Robert Richet [Nobel Prize for medicine, 1913] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. ---Bertrand Russell ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it almost seem like a live teacher. ---Bertrand Russell ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't let me catch anyone talking about the Universe in my department. ---Ernest Rutherford ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment. ---Ernest Rutherford ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh, that stuff. We never bother with that in our work. ---Ernest Rutherford [on relativity] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Never say `I tried it once and it did not work'. ---Ernest Rutherford ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Getting patronage is the whole art of life. A man cannot have a career without it. ---George Bernard Shaw ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Science is divided into two categories, physics and stamp-collecting. ---Ernest Rutherford ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I wish to God these calculations had been accomplished by steam. ---Charles Babbage ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One thought fills immensity. ---William Blake ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ---Arthur C. Clarke ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment...it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands. ---Margaret Thatcher [during the Falklands war] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind. ---William Thomson, Lord Kelvin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. ---Mark Twain ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is not what I don't understand in the Bible that worries me---it's what I do understand. ---Mark Twain ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The world was created on 22nd October, 4004 BC at 6 o'clock in the evening. ---Archbishop James Ussher ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dylan, in his early folkie days, often took the melodies from other songs in writing his own. According to Arlo Guthrie, this was an old folk tradition that his father, Woodie, called "stealing" until Pete Seeger renamed it "the folk process." ---Steve Premo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There, we measure shadows, and search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. ---Edwin Hubble ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. ---Ken Olson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...my epitaph. That, when the time comes, will manifestly have to be: `I told you so, you damn fools'. ---H. G. Wells ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- History becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. ---H. G. Wells ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, that he is talking nonsense. ---Alfred North Whitehead ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Space travel is utter bilge. ---Richard van der Riet Woolley [Astronomer Royal 1956--71] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Galileo proved that when you drop two objects of equal weight, the heavier one always hits the ground first. ---US Olympic downhill ski coach, 1994 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AIN'T IT JUST THAT WAY: In Barbra Streisand's new movie, "the object of her desire is Jeff Bridges, a handsome, distracted math professor, whose own life has been so undone by sex and beautiful women that he longs for a platonic union...." [LA Times, Thursday Nov. 7] ---included in a sci.physics.research post by John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven ---William Shakespeare [Helena, "All's Well That Ends Well"] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nearly every internet application protocol (HTTP, FTP, NNTP, SMTP) specifies as the line terminator and nearly every unix-derived application screws it up at some point it its development. ---David Jones ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. ---Woody Allen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Innocent light-minded men, who think that astronomy can be learnt while looking at the stars without knowledge of mathematics will, in the next life, be birds. ---Plato ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I hate reality, but it is still the only place where I can get a decent steak. ---Woody Allen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no substitute for understanding what you are doing. ---Loren P. Meissner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...he wondered why Digital decided to use the dollar sign as the default prompt character. It looked like the same dollar sign that glowed from the Digital salesman's eyes.... ---Bruce Ellis, THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO VMS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The world no longer thinks of America as its policeman, but as its lifeguard. ---David Hasselhoff ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We don't have girls without tops on the beach, thank God. In Cannes there are naked people running around. ---David Hasselhoff ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Formatting is no substitute for writing. ---Leslie Lamport ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am not a crook. ---Richard Nixon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's no exaggeration to say the undecideds could go one way or another. ---George Bush ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I write a paper, I change my notation much more than I change my concepts. ---Leslie Lamport ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Redefining \verb|\today| will not alter the postmark printed on the envelope by the post office. ---Leslie Lamport ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fashion is just a set of guidelines for those with no sense of style. ---Stuart Grant ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This that the caterpillar calls the end of the world, we call butterfly. ----Lao Tzu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What men really want is not knowledge but certainty. ---Bertrand Russell ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Context is half the story. ---Tyler White ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Young men should prove theorems; old men should write books. ---G. H. Hardy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. ---Japanese proverb ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A shell is an application that doesn't know what it's doing. ---James Giles ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cosmologists are resourceful individuals, however, never fearful of allowing ugly facts to destroy beautiful hypotheses. ---John Barrow and Joseph Silk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But where there is quantum theory there is hope. ---John Barrow and Joseph Silk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So how do you pump up a bunch of technocrats when you're a long-haired astronomer without a tie? ---Clifford Stoll ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Darren liked punk music, Unix networks, laser typography, and friends with spiked haircuts---in that order....`The louder the music, the better the code.' ---Clifford Stoll ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Life was full: no hacker is worth missing a Dead concert for. ---Clifford Stoll ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A simple rule of thumb: never trap for an error you don't know how to handle. ---Ed Wilts ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't know anything about music. In my line of work you don't have to. ---Elvis Presley ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I can cope with missing information, but not with visual formatting masquerading as logical markup. ---Sebastian Rahtz ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Style counts. It's as unrealistic to expect a B.S. computer scientist or engineer to be a good programmer as it is to expect a B.A. English major to be a good writer. ---Peter Shenkin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. ---Chaucer ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, it's easier to write a book than a compiler, and I think M&R [Metcalf and Reid] is correct. ---Mike Metcalf ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But there is more to art appreciation than the appreciation of art. ---John D. Barrow ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To a first approximation, life IS extinct. ---John D. Barrow ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is intriguing to learn that the simplicity of the world depends upon the temperature of the environment. ---John D. Barrow ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is no accident that the world does not appear simple; if it were simple, then we would be too simple to know it. ---John D. Barrow ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The more comprehensible the Universe becomes the more pointless it seems. ---Steven Weinberg ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The theoretician's prayer" `Dear lord, forgive me the sin of arrogance, and Lord, by arrogance I mean the following...' ---Leon Lederman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembracnce of the city of God. ---Emerson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rembrandt expressed his profoundest feelings just as well when he painted a carcass hanging up in a butcher's shop as when he painted the Crucifixion or his mistress. ---Roger Fry ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...misunderstanding of probability may be the greatest of all general impediments to scientific literacy. ---Stephen Jay Gould ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All science is intelligent inference; excessive literalism is delusion, not a humble bowing to evidence. ---Stephen Jay Gould ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The search for a new iconography is no minor task, no little frill to an effort that can only be fulfilled in the verbal mode. Icons are primary fashioners of thought, and the search for fundamentally representation therefore becomes one of the most important efforts a scholar can undertake. ---Stephen Jay Gould ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...good principles can also be used to buttress bad arguments. ---Stephen Jay Gould ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terms are best defined within the context of explanatory theories. ---Stephen Jay Gould ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No one-liner can ever be optimal. ---Stephen Jay Gould ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The quotable one-liner is a mainstay of culture, not an innovation in our modern era of sound bites. ---Stephen Jay Gould ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Theory-free science makes about as much sense as value-free politics. ---Stephen Jay Gould ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike and yet it is the most precious thing we have. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good artists borrow ideas. Great artists steal them. ---Igor Stravinsky ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The English public takes no interest in a work of art until it has been told that it is immoral. ---Oscar Wilde ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like `Psychic Wins Lottery'? ---Jay Leno ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It prevents diseases like AIDS and bad smells. It makes the woman control her sexual urges. ---Sheik Yousef el-Badry [Egyptian cleric, on female circumcision] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The big difference between the Spice Girls and a porno movie: a porno movie has better music. ---Phil Spector ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Since it was only nine months' earnings I thought I could afford it. ---Ted Turner [on his donation of a billion dollars to the U.N.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. ---Jeremy S. Anderson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away. ---Antoine de Saint-Exupery ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The reasonable adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. ---George Bernard Shaw ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not love, love is not beauty, beauty is not music, music is the best. ---Frank Zappa ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [F]ormulation is secondary to a coherent concept. ---Artur Swietanowski ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No matter how many bird cage liner trade rags dedicated to rehashing vendor press releases as breaking news for the consumption of bill gates specifying shoes on desk resting business lunching alpha macho executives say to the contrary, if it isn't running VMS, it isn't a 'cluster'. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but buzzword appropriation and revisionist history doesn't cut it in the place known as reality, regardless of what the herd believes. ---Tom O'Toole ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VMS at STSCI is, in a word, everything... From the observation planning, control (thats at Goddard SFC), Data aquisition, the `pipeline' for data formatting, and IRAF. ---Paul Repacholi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We don't do requests unless someone comes up and asks. ---Steve Knightley ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sipping coffee on a sunbaked terrace can be surprisingly productive. ---Michael Metcalf [on the origin of NUMERICAL RECIPES IN FORTRAN 90] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Any effect, constant, theorem or equation named after Professor X was first discovered by Professor Y, for some value of Y not equal to X. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If he did not understand the code, he would not offer large amounts of cash to people finding any remaining bugs. ---David Kastrup [on Don Knuth] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There's just no substitute for a comment to _explain_ the program's _intentions_. Code can be self-documenting, but only in the sense it documents what the computer is going to do. What the programmer _intended_ is a separate matter. ---David B. Serafini ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blessed be the pessimists for they hath made backups! ---John F. Davis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. ---Groucho Marx ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- People who read other people's papers should be careful. ---Simon White ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach, but that would be boasting. ---Lewis Thomas [asked what from the Earth he would send to an extraterrestrial civilisation] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We found some software we did not fully understand, a situation we disliked. ---Ralf Gaertner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oh you damned observers, you always find extra things. ---Fred Hoyle [quoted by Richard Ellis at IAU Symposium 183] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is full of passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering: these are noble pursuits necessary to sustain life but poetry, beauty romance, love--- these are what we stay alive for. ---John Keating [character in DEAD POETS' SOCIETY] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala is being asked to provide documentation on how HHS is assessing state plans to spend $50 million a year on abstinence-only education. House Commerce Chairman Thomas Bliley (R-Va.) contends that while HHS approved each state's strategy, some after-school programs do not promote abstinence and some states may be using the federal funds to distribute birth control information. ---USA Today (01/06/98) P. 5A ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If I dont have to deliver documentation, fix bugs, and respond to requests for changes 3 years after I deliver the code, it's not really programming. ---Gene Wagenbreth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We have some more information, but I don't think we want to use it. ---Leon Koopmans ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. ---Tim Jacques ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. ---Dylan Thomas ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What I find most disheartening is the thought that somewhere out there our galaxy has been deleted from somebody else's sample. ---Alec Boksenberg [on the occasion of his 60th birthday celebration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm an honest man. ---Ray Carlberg [on his recantation of a universe in which the matter density is high] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Every now and then it's nice to use knowledge and control to set yourself up for an easy time. ---Ken Plotkin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking at the code of other people can be useful (if you understand their code). ---Werner W. Schulz ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRY THIS: echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln256%Pln256/snlbx]sb3135071790101768542287578439snlbxq'|dc ---Paddy Eason ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've always felt that the perfect is the enemy of the adequate. ---Sam Huey (V.P. Engineering, Digital Telephone Systems) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If the job was easy, we'd get somebody cheaper than you to do it. ---Steve Calfee, Time Warner Interactive ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One of the main advantages of Unix over, say, MVS, is the tremendous number of features Unix lacks. ---Chris Torek ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. ---William James ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before we abandon our contemporary view of physics, it is essential that we ascertain that we have not been led astray by some subtle mathematical articice.... ---William I. Newman, Martha P. Haynes and Yervant Terzian ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The application of efficient statistical procedure has power, but the application of common sense has more. ---Jasper Wall ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ah, but a VAX is more than just an instruction set, it's a way of life!!! ---Gotfryd Smolik ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...if appearance and essence were the same thing, there would be no need for science. ---Michio Kaku ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If the theory produces nonsensical answers that diagree with physical data, then it must be discarded, no matter how elegant its mathematics. In the final analysis, we are physicists, not philosophers. ---Michio Kaku ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it. ---Joseph Joubert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The laws of physics tell us what is possible, not what is practical. The laws of physics are independent of what it might cost to test them. ---Michio Kaku ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Most people who haven't been trained in physics probably think of what physicists do as a question of incredibly complicated calculations, but that's not really the esssence of it. The essence of it is that physics is about concepts, wanting to understand the conceptes, the principles by which the world works. ---Edward Witten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In answer to David Blunkett's question `why should it be the woman getting up at 5 o'clock to do a cleaning job who pays for the privilege of them [graduates] earning a higher income?', we should retort `why are you assuming that a woman doing a cleaning job will never want to enter higher education or to send her daughter there?' ---Sue Blackwell [vice-president of Birmingham Association of University Teachers, criticising government plans to make students (or their families) pay university fees] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One should try everything in life once, with the exception of incest and folk dancing. ---Thomas Beecham ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fundamentalsatz der EDV: Computer rechnen vor allem damit, dass der Mensch denkt. ---Volker Typke ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on: nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it. ---The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Price, performance, quality. Choose any two you like. ---Richard Levitte ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think I liked him better with a beard, Jim. ---Dr. McCoy [comparing the mirror-universe Spock to the normal one] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Lancre Morris Men sat glumly on the turf, passing an earthenware jug between them. It had not been a good rehearsal. ---Terry Pratchett, LORDS AND LADIES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The original title [for THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE], THE MADNESS OF GEORGE III, was dropped because test audiences in America wondered why they hadn't seen parts I and II. ---Radio Times, 2--8 May 1988 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CALIFORNIA magazine, in an article on "The Man Who Invented Time Travel", even ran a photograph of me doing physics in the nude on Palomar Mountain. I was mortified---not by the photo, but by the totally outrageous claims that I had invented time machines and time travel. ---Kip Thorne ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The right to suffer is one of the joys of a free economy. ---Howard Pyle [aide to President Eisenhower] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are not expected to understand this. ---Ken Thompson [Unix V6 kernel source] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers. ---Bill Gates [THE ROAD AHEAD, p. 265] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BTW, Digital tends to get *lots* of these "grody" areas of software design "right", generally. The results sometimes have to be studied to be appreciated, and certainly they feel wholly unlike more clever, hacky solutions found in systems like UNIX, PRIMOS, and so on, but Digital seems to have a pretty good history of at least thinking through new (sub)systems before rapidly deploying them. ---James Craig Burley ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now that the merger is done we can move on. My colleagues and I in the Alpha design group are ready to kick some major butt. ---Matthew Reilly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The sensation of having experienced the profound, transcendant and sublime is caused by hearing something trite, melodramatic and cliched, uttered by someone you'd like to have sex with. ---Kristen Brennan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One of my favourite [web] sites features Princess Diana's name picked out in stars, which twinkle while a Yamaha organ plays Led Zeppelin's STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN. ---Uri Geller [writing for the TIMES(!) in his regular column about the web] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VMS loyalist that I am, I still consider OpenVMS clusters (originally VAXclusters from 1984) to define the standard of "clustering" that other operating systems can only aspire to. I'm not putting down what folks have accomplished with Linux - but I have seen a lot of gushing text ascribing "firsts" and other superlatives to Linux that were accomplished by OpenVMS a decade ago. Linux does a lot and it's cheap - a very worthwhile combination not to be sneezed at - but a little perspective would be instructive. ---Steve Lionel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- afaict, if VMS users are forced to make a switch to Un*x or NT or whatever in 5 or 10 years because DEC drops VMS support and no-one picks it up, it won't be any tougher a transition than if they do it today. So scare-tactics trying to get them to abandon a perfectly good platform sooner rather than later are counterproductive. Fortunately most of the VMS types I know are far too sensible -- and far too interested in getting real work done rather than playing with their machines to no end -- to fall for such ploys. If they weren't then the doom-and-gloom stories would have become self-fulfilling prophecy lone ago. ---John Girash ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Windows NT 5.0 is an evolutionary, not revolutionary, release of the Windows NT operating system. While there are important new features in this release, version 5.0 will build on a proven system architecture and incorporate tens of thousands of bug fixes from version 4.0. ---http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/community/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, there was an 11/750 that was running scheduling and monitoring software for an extremely expensive peice of high-energy physics equipment. The box stayed up so long that, so the story goes, DEC released a software patch to avoid reusing process-id 0 when the process numbers wrapped. ---from comp.os.vms ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In an OpenWorld without walls and fences who needs Windows and Gates? ---Peter Sutter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Honor thy error as a hidden intention. ---Brian Eno ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The foolish reject what they see and not what they think; the wise reject what they think and not what they see. ---Huang Po ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why is it that people compile benchmark results but not lists of bugs? What can the user community do to encourage progress in compiler and library reliability? Why is it that Knuth is the only person who is willing to pay someone who finds a bug in his program? If Bill Gates took the same approach, would he still be rich? ---George White Gates is smarter: instead of paying for bug reports, he sells bugs. As to who *else* is smarter -- consumers of Knuth's output vs. consumers of Gates' output -- well, draw your own conclusions. ;-) ---James Craig Burley ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Although robust enough for general use, adventures into the esoteric periphery of the C shell may reveal unexpected quirks. ---man csh on SunOS 5.5 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I were a lad, and I lived in a cardboard box in't middle of motorway, you could edit big files, have a powerfail before you'd saved your work, do an EDIT/RECOVER and be just were you left off. Tell that to the kids of today and they just don't believe you.... (Apologies to Monty Python and the Three Yorkshiremen) Still a lad 'cos I can still EDIT/RECOVER! ---Nic Clews ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- However, I have not heard anything that yet surpasses singing Frank Zappa's "The Torture never Stops" to the tune of "California Girls" by the Beach Boys!!!! ---Gary Worsham ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It seems that at no point in history has anyone else ever spoken in the particular accent adopted by Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. ---Shaggy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- People who don't expect physics to be *precise* miss out on a lot of important insights. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is impossible to avoid a philosophical note when contemplating the Omega values. ---Ray Carlberg ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is nothing wrong with measuring the cosmological parameters. ---Carlos Frenk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bobby [Willis, husband and manager] and I have only been apart on three occasions in 30 years and that was when the boys were born. ---Cilla Black ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I like also the men who study the Great Pyramid, with a view to deciphering its mystical lore. Many great books have been written on this subject, some of which have been presented to me by their authors. It is a singular fact that the Great Pyramid always predicts the history of the world accurately up to the date of publication of the book in question, but after that date it becomes less reliable. ---Bertrand Russell ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- E1 -- "I hear that if you play the windows NT 4.0 CD backwards, you will hear a satanic message." E2 -- "That's nothing! If you play it forwards, it installs Windows NT 4.0!!!" ---from Usenet ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Admire as much as you can. Most people do not admire enough. ---Vincent van Gogh ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While C allowed you to easily shoot yourself in the foot, C++ makes it harder but when you do it will blow your leg off. ---Bjarne Stroustrup ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I did read of a survey a month or so back in which one of the claimed results was that about 2/3 of the "top managers" said that the Internet was built and owned by Microsoft. (They also said that 80% of 6-year-olds gave the correct answer "nobody" to "Who owns the Internet?" ;-) ---John Chambers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't need a poorly concocted GUI interfaced piece of shit to get work done and the average corporation doesn't either. NO amount of cheesy low-budget icon graphics will get the production data out the door any faster. ---Brian Schenkenberger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If VMS is a legacy system, then Mercedes-Benz is a legacy automobile! ---Phillip Helbig ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Agreed, Anderson and Yes could be a touch pretentious at times, but they can't be dismissed simply with a flippant `Now where did I put my Pistols record?'. ---Stuart Penney ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No matter how wonderful your user interface is, it would be better if there were less of it. ---Alan Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have an intense desire to return to the womb. Anybody's. ---Woody Allen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it with religious conviction. ---Blaise Pascal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why speculate when you can calculate? ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I cannot believe the size of her butt. If she does appear in PLAYBOY, it will have to be an extra big edition. ---Joan Collins (on Monica Lewinsky) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'd rather get correct answers slowly than corrupt ones quickly. ---Van Snyder ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic. ---Dan Rather ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Whenever you see division signs contained in a sheet of specifications, be afraid. Be very afraid. ---Stephen Hoffman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its currents; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away. ---Marcus Aurelius ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you can look into the seeds of time and say, which grain will grow, and which will not, speak to me. ----Shakespeare [Macbeth] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If anything, it is probably a bit unfair to Che Guevara. ---Judy Beishon [of the executive committee of the Socialist Party, on the Church's advertising campaign featuring an image of Jesus based on the familiar face of the Che] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The principle objection against the Virgo Cluster is that it does not exist. ---Gustav Tammann ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience. ---Goethe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Study the beginning of the universe, it is easier than playing guitar. ---Manolo Sanlúcar ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think in C that any random sequence of characters is, at most, one keystroke away from being legal code. ---Ron Shepard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Funny that you should mention exponentiation. Have you seen how C does X**I ? They have to cast I as a "double", and then call "pow". The result is that, instead of a fast repeated-multiplication trick (one discovered by the Chinese several thousand years ago), they wind up calling a double precision logarithm and exponential. ---Kenneth G. Hamilton ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But getting a VMS beta version is not that much fun. All the stuff just works. It is only interesting for developers writing code using some of the new features. Can anyone imagine a VMS pre-release SDK for VMS 8.0, where only 60% of the VMS 7.3 executables will run ? No - it is laughable ! ---Arne Vajhoe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Without trying to be insulting, it appears that extended familiarity with unix shells has straight-jacketed many people's ability to think in other terms. ---Ken Fairfield ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It never hurts to be conservative where the galactic plane is involved. ---Chris Fassnacht ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. ---Plato ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Life's too short for a serial line. ---Dave Brown ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is more to fear from the cultural imperialism of the USA. Now a Swedish tourist is accused of being a pedophile because he had his teenage daughter in her nightgown on his knee. An American sister-in-law reported them to the Californian authorities. The Swedish embassy says it may be a case of culture clash. ---soc.culture.nordic ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My description is only good when the tangent bundle is trivial. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind. ---Louis Pasteur ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. ---Confucius ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyone who is actually offended by an s.p.r rejection notice has a bizarre system of values. ---Matt McIrvin (sci.physics.research co-moderator) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I couldn't quite make up my mind whether to major in math or physics until I dissolved part of my winter coat in battery acid while doing a laboratory experiment. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place. ---Douglas Adams [on Windows '95] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is better to be wrong than to be vague. ---Freeman Dyson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If the teaching of evolution is outlawed only outlaws will evolve. ---from Usenet ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage? ---Erasmus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Loss of accuracy can be more subtle than compilation failures; indeed its quite possible to use a program for years not knowing that it is giving incorrect results. ---Richard Maine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The great astrophysicists are the ones who know which corners to cut. ---Paul Schechter ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The sky is a stretched image if what is there. ---Peter Schneider ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer. ----Henry Kissinger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is better to be wrong than to be vague. ---Freeman Dyson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- However much one makes music for one's own soul, it is far better if someone is listening. ---Maddy Prior ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German, and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of things that are to be. ----Adlai Stevenson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't think there is a crisis; I think there is a lack of knowledge. ---Leon Koopmans ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is easier to create consciousness than to define it. ---Leon Koopmans ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyone who slaps a `this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network. ---Tim Berners-Lee ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All that we can reasonably be sure of is that human beings are more intelligent than the universe. ---Mike Hawkins ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It may be hard to believe, but cosmology really is a seriously emotional issue, and can arouse irrational passions in otherwise intelligent and sensible men and women. ---Mike Hawkins ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Statistics is just a complicated method of counting....It does not describe reality, it merely quantifies it. ---Mike Hawkins ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It may be valid to express our ideas of reality in mathematical terms, but does it always make sense to do the converse? ---Mike Hawkins ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer simulations cannot tell us anything new about the universe. They are just a way of clarifying the arguments contained in our theories and speculations. ---Mike Hawkins ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Although the narrow corridor appears So short, the journey took me twenty years. ---Thom Gunn ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...arguments from personal incredulity are weak, and almost always end up serving as an embarrassment to those who try to use them. ---Mike Hawkins ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think the most important part of an astronomer's work is to decide what problems to tackle. ---Mike Hawkins ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The task of the scientist is not so much to seek an insight into reality as to try to draw together from the multifarious ideas of his time those which have a bearing on the solution to his problem. ---Mike Hawkins ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tenors are either bad guys or the evangelist. ---Steven (smguy) [on who sings what in the music of Bach] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...I feel that although we may never know exactly what is right for Bach's vocal music we do pretty well know what is wrong for his vocal music. ---Steven (smguy) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation. ---Albert Schweitzer ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The modern conference resembles the pilgrimage of medieval Christendom in that it allows the participants to indulge themselves in all the pleasures and diversiuons of travel while appearing to be austerely bent on sel-improvement. To be sure, there are certain penitential exercises to be performed---the presentation of a paper, perhaps, and certainly listening to the papers of others. But with this excuse you journey to new and interesting places, meet new and interesting people, and form new and interesting relationships with them; exchange gossip and confidences (for your well-worn stories are fresh to them, and vice versa); eat, dring and make merry in their company every evening; and yet, at the end if it all, return home with an enhanced reputation for seriousness of mind. Today's conferees have an additional advantage over pilgrims of old in that their expenses are usually paid, or at least sibsidised, by the institution to which they belong, be it a government department, a commercial firm, or, most commonly perhaps, a university. ---David Lodge ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mind you, the same person asked me if Sir Walter Scott was the founder of Scotland, couldn't tie her shoelaces, and once asked me if the Isle of Man, where I used to live, floated or went all the way down to the bottom. And this was a Princeton graduate! ---Peter Herissone-Kelly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If I wanted to seize power over others I'd try to think of a better way than newsgroup moderation. ---Ted Bunn [sci.physics.research moderator] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian (not wanting to be a messiah): `You are all individuals....' Crowd (in unison): `We are all individuals....' ---Monty Python's Flying Circus, THE LIFE OF BRIAN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It seems to me if you play an electric guitar there's only five conceivable settings. ---Richard Thompson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- They think that you must be a genius if you never say anything. ---Richard Thompson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think with the Internet it's become much easierto cultify anyone. ---Richard Thompson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Any dead guitarist. ---Richard Thompson [on his source of inspiration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not sure the English understand irony either. But they are more used to it. ---Richard Thompson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A "musician's musician" -- you know, what that really means is, obscure and poor. ---Richard Thompson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons. ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stupidity got us into this mess, so why can't it get us out? ---Will Rogers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Never trust an SGML/XML vendor whose web page is not valid HTML. ---William F. Hammond ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The real malady is fear of life, not of death. ---Naguib Mahfouz ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Are there still people convinced that pot is harmless just because Sagan smoked it and was extremely insightful? ---Aldis Rapsys ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This idea was motivated by a wrong observational measurement and by a wrong theoretical idea as well. ---Carlos Frenk [on bias] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You should never let theoretical ideas motivate what you do. ---Carlos Frenk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The univserse is big: it doesn't fit in one viewgraph. ---Carlos Frenk [showing the VIRGO Consortium Hubble volume simulation] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is nothing profound about the fact that the [galaxy] correlation function is a power law. ---Carlos Frenk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I know why---they don't read the theory papers. ---Carlos Frenk [on why observers were surprised at high-redshift clustering] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's just a computational problem; it's not a physical problem anymore. ---Carlos Frenk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The temptation to carry on when you have a million sources at your disposal is overwhelming. ---Jasper Wall ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's always good to see what you're looking for before you try to go and find it. ---Peter Coles ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you think about it, there are different things you can do in cosmology. ---Peter Coles ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABBA---all that fun encased in tasteless tight lycra...and that's just the blokes!!! ---Nikki Varney ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BTW: if somebody sends us a disk with a capacity between one and two terabytes to play with for a while, we'll happily look at any problems that might arise in the OpenVMS I/O and file system... ---Hoff Hoffman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've met several people with multiple personalities, one for posting online and another for talking to the very same people in person. ---Dan Abel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of Gaussian distribution curves. I wrote the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. ---Carl Sagan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The new approach of supporting RDB/VMS for production and offering RDB/NT for free for unsupported training and test purposes seems to me to be a very appropriate use of the OS's ! ---Arne Varhøj ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yet one must bear in mind---dare we call it a Principle of Humility?---that at least some properties of the world might not have an elegant mathematical explanation, and we can try to guess which ones these are. ---Craig J. Hogan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The great strength of the VMS Lock Manager is not the science inside but the adherence outside. ---Larry Kilgallen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In math, no fact is ever annoying once you truly understand it. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part of the success story with C was it was the only language you got with unix. Costs can be important. ---Ian Chivers [quoting Brian Meek] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The trouble is that inflation is a paradigm rather than a model, and has many different realizations which can lead to a range of different predictions. ---Andrew Liddle ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In order to burn out, first you've got to burn. ---Konrad Kuijken ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Physics confines itself to that thin sliver of reality that can be accurately quantified. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But as usual, everything becomes perfectly obvious once you draw a Penrose diagram. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. ---Oscar Wilde ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't believe in conspiracy theories. They are all a plan of the intelligentsia to stop us finding out the truth. ---Dave Howdon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In some cases, I doubt even the optical. ---Renzo Sancisi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ballsiest opening act award goes to: John Martyn opening for Pink Floyd on the Wish You Were Here sports arena tour. JM walks on stage carrying an acoustic guitar, calmly sits down in a chair as thousands of stoned, impatient Floyd fans scream "We don't want fucking FOLK music, we want the FLOYD." Plugs into a huge panel of effect boxes, turns up to 11 and proceeds to blow everyone away for 25 minutes. Gets a *huge* standing ovation. ---Jim Kauffman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At some dates, although not all, Peter Gabriel donned the famous fox head and his wife Jill's red dress, which stunned the Lindisfarne audience somewhat. ---Colin Dodd [on Genesis opening for Lindisfarne in the early 70s] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While von Neumann is one of those titans that dominated the first half of the 20th century, Smale is more typical of the latter half - he protested the Vietnam war, and now he even has his own web page! ---John Baez [on Stephen Smale] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That would be a good idea. ---Gandhi [when asked what he thought of western civilisation] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Whether the range and precision of the quadword format is ideal, is a whole other topic of debate. I remember when this was new, someone (at a DECUS symposium or maybe in a DECUS newsletter, I can't recall) suggested that a 1-millisecond precision would have been much superior, since the range would expand from 30,000 years to 300,000,000 years. --Nigel Arnot [on the superiority of VMS's internal time reckoning; Y2k? What Y2k?] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you don't have the luxury of designing the file format, life is more difficult. ---Richard Maine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We never live, but are always in the expectation of living. ---Voltaire ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Life begins on the other side of despair. ---Jean-Paul Sartre ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's dangerous to learn science from popularization, and it's REALLY dangerous to learn science from people who only LEARNED it from popularizations. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not an expert on general relativity, either. I just play one on the internet. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Be glad for life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to look up at the stars. ---Henry Van Dyke ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The history of cosmology shows us that in every age devout people believe that they have at last discovered the true nature of the universe. ---Edward Harrison ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From an endless beach of reality, we take a grain of sand and call it the world. ----Robert Pirsig ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not nearly as perverted as feeling joy when invoking a fortran compiler, but still. ---Stefan A. Deutscher [on the film PULP FICTION] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But then again, there is more to life than a computer. (Two computers, for instance.) ---Stefan A. Deutscher ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Part of the art of mathematics...is finding a good level of generality at which to address an issue. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dancing slow was an important part of early rock and roll dance events -- but declined in importance through the 60's as things like psychedelia and the 10-minute guitar solo gained prominence. ---http://www.urbanlegends.com/songs/american_pie_interpretations.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The pickup truck has endured as a symbol of sexual independence and potency, especially in a Texas context. ---http://www.urbanlegends.com/songs/american_pie_interpretations.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To be a poet at twenty is to be twenty; to be a poet at forty is to be a poet. ---Eugene Delacroix ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When you see a square root, it's often a hint that some simpler idea without a square root is lurking around the corner! ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...it is not always a good idea to be too precise. ---Richard Feynman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nobody understands the world they're in, but some people are better off at it [sic] than others. ---Richard Feynman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What would an intelligent alien think of a culture which incessantly depicts horrible ways of destroying life but censors the act of creating it? He would surely decide such a culture must be mortally sick. ---Arthur C. Clarke ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At the VAX 20th anniversary DECUS in Anaheim (Nov 1997), I attended the engineers session on the last day. Some guy shuffled up to the microphone and announced that his machine had last been booted in late 1983 and was still going as of that moment. That makes 14 years or so. ---Mike Duffy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And it is documented, I suppose the master index of the OpenVMS manuals contains more pages than the entire available documentation for Windows-NT. ---Dirk Munk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But the compiler can't read the user's mind - only the code. ---Richard Maine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ---Andre Gide ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What a wonderful and amazing scheme have we here of the magnificent vastness of the universe! So many Suns, so many Earths ...! ---Christian Huygens ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The trick, if you can pull it off, is to pick the right anxieties. ---Carl Sagan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think it's unlikely that the sum of what we're too ignorant to figure out will save us. ---Carl Sagan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Science is everything we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else. ---Donald Knuth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think we both should be better in our beds sleeping than trying to form a VAXcluster over a GSM link :) ---Victoriano Giralt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In physics theories can be demolished by a single experiment. In softer sciences an erroneous theory often live on until its proponents die of old age. (I view anthropology as a science softer than physics but harder than sociology and psychology.) ---Don White ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are four chief obstacles in grasping truth...namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and the concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge. ---Roger Bacon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I hear of Schrödinger's Cat, I reach for my gun. ---Stephen Hawking ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If the system manager needs to be more knowledgable than the hacker, then the OS is really bad! ---Arne Vajhoej ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was odd to see Dennis Ritchie citing a reference to John Baez in science fiction by Greg Egan in _Nature_... sort of like a post slipped into my inbox through a crack from the Wacky Universe. ---Matt McIrvin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes. ---Erasmus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? ---T. S. Elliot ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. ---Mahfouz Naguib ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon -- instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. ---Dale Carnegie ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (MPAA hypocrisy note of the day: it's okay to have countless incidents of bone-crunching body slams and soprano-generating kicks to the groin for a PG-13, but there can't be any bare breasts because that would mean an R.) ---James Berardinelli ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Be glad for life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to look up at the stars. ---Henry Van Dyke ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The doctors say that every tenth British teenager has gonorrhea ("the clap"). Last year, the number of registered cases of gonorrhea rose by 50 percent. London physician Dr. Patrick French told the BBC that his clinic alone has more gonorrhea patients than ALL of Sweden. ---http://www.onelist.com/message/Futureframe/135?&start=128 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Understanding is a sort of ecstasy. ---Carl Sagan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In a competition between your intuition -- or mine -- and a theorem, the theorem will win every time. ---Ted Bunn ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But one thing I really enjoy about formats is that I put the numbers and the decimal points exactly where I want them. There are very few things that I have control over, so the power rush is fantastic. ---Ken Plotkin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are bound to be assholes who look down on you if you don't have an academic job, but wise people will judge you by what you actually do - and luckily, the best people in a given subject are slightly more likely to be wise than the rest. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I always get a kick out of living after my favorite sf stories took place. ---John H. Jenkins ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. ---John W. Gardner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying. ---Christian Gellert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Teenagers used to go to the movies to see adults making love. Now adults go to the movies to see teenagers making love. ---Roger Ebert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To check if the playing field is level, one must first get off one's high horse. ---Tony Kavanagh ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unfortunately, Wayne has one major flaw as a human being: he loves to use frames in his web pages. ---Ted Bunn ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digression is the mother of insight. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But high noise is one thing, and low signal is another. ---Matt McIrvin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea, searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore, so it eats it. (It's rather like getting tenure!) ---Daniel Dennett ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Which countries [only 5 of them] have the death penalty for children? A: Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United States ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact. ---William James ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Magnetic fields are to astrophysics as sex is to psychology. ---H.C. van der Hulst ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One should learn what terminology the cognoscenti use, even when it's stupid and you don't feel like using it yourself. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do. ---Bertrand Russell ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics. ---Fletcher Knebel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CANNES, France--I am a little dizzy. I have just returned from a $2,500-a-ticket dinner auction that followed a fashion show of Victoria's Secret swimwear and included Kenneth Branagh and James Caan stripping to the waist to be massaged by supermodel Heidi Klum on top of a piano later to be played by Elton John, while Harvey Weinstein auctioned off lunch with Nelson Mandela for $100,000. ---Roger Ebert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams. ---Mary Kelly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago! ---Former U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, "Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?" When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, "We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts...". ---Terry Pratchett, in HOGFATHER ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ehrlichkeit verlangt nicht, dass man alles sagt. Ehrlichkeit verlangt nur, dass man nichts sagt, was man nicht auch denkt. ---Helmut Schmidt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To be a poet at twenty is to be twenty; to be a poet at forty is to be a poet. ---Eugene Delacroix ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We are reminded of the theory that American society prolongs adolescence far beyond its natural life-span. If these characters were French and engaging in the same dialogue and behavior, we would guess their age at about 13. ---Roger Ebert (reviewing BOYS AND GIRLS) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens.... The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment. ---Johannes Kepler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TEHRAN - An Iranian man who recently had a sex change to become a woman wants to reverse the operation because she finds life as a woman insufferable in Iran, a newspaper said on Monday. The 25-year-old Maryam, formerly Mehran, underwent a sex change last year, despite strong parental opposition. But she soon regretted the decision, finding it difficult to cope with "restrictions" surrounding a woman's life in the conservative Islamic society. While almost everything else in Iran is illegal, sex change operations are, but there are no provisions for would-be transsexuals to test out their new identity first. ---http://www.bizarrenews.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure. ---Mark Twain ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's important to pay close attention in school. For years I thought that bears masturbated all winter. ---Damon R. Milhem ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. ---Abraham Lincoln ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians. ---Pat Robertson [speech at GOP Presidental Convention (1992)] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. ---Socrates ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BTW, the source code to perl gives me a headache, I haven't seen anything so convoluted since I did the Maple ports for Waterloo. The comments are either quotes from 'Lord of the Rings' or self-congratulatory remarks of how efficient or clever the next block of code is. ---David Jones ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. ---Carl Sagan ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...idiots, imbeciles, aliens, the insane and women... ---A law standing in Texas until 1918 regulating who could not vote ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made. ---Jean Giraudoux ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We will derive cosmology by squaring the astrophysics. ---Steve Myers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our opinions of inelegance are influenced by the observational situation. ---Martin Rees ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped. ---Marcel Achard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In a world where the major news story is that Britney Spears has sent an e-mail to Prince William I am proud to be called desperately unfashionable. ---Ric Sanders ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive--to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. ---Marcus Aurelius ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can think of mathematicians as physicists who only do trivial observations. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think we agree, the past is over. ---George W. Bush ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I will not work in an environment that fails to provide source-code traceback of runtime errors; my time is worth more than that. ---Charles D. Russell ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The world is run by people who show up. ---Uncle Al ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fortran programs are not written, they are rewritten. ---Anonymous ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- American films are hardly ever about work, especially hard work, factory work. The most common employment areas in American movies are probably law enforcement, crime, medicine, the law, prostitution and bartending. The movies have no curiosity about people who get up every day and go out to work hard and earn a living. ---Roger Ebert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I remember playing some olde English folk song (can't recall which one) at the Renaissance Faire a few years ago, and this hippie - looking bloke came up to me and said, "Hey, that's a Grateful Dead song, man!" To which I replied, "That song was written about 450 years before Jerry Garcia." It did NOT make this fellow's day. ---Chuck Owston ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients. ---Ralph Waldo Emerson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Special cases are a great source of confusion. ---Richard Maine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One of my client's data center has 30+ Unix systems managed by 6 people, 90+ NT servers managed by about 20 people and 30+ OpenVMS systems managed part time by one person. ---Chuck Chopp ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The way I come up with theories is this: I think about lots of ways a theory could be nice, and try to find a theory which is nice in all these ways. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. ---Wernher von Braun ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For NASA, space is still a high priority. ---Al Gore ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As long as I have any choice in the matter, I will live only in a country where civil liberty, tolerance and equality of ALL citizens before the law are the rule. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The question about the arrow of time is not its presence, but its origin. ---squark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix. ---Dan Quayle ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Internet is a great way to get on the Net. ---Bob Dole ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are two evils to combat in the software business: proprietary formats and the philosophy that software must be free. Finding the middle ground between those two extremes is the path to true enlightenment. ---Phillip Helbig ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yeah, I can go to my right and my left. That's because I'm amphibious. ---Basketball player Chris Washburn [commenting on his ability to drive to the basket] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Getting students up to speed for work quantum gravity is a full-time job! ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee. ---Abraham Lincoln ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The people who vote decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. ---Josef Stalin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. ---Anne Frank ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we really need? ---Lee Iacocca ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I certainly don't hang around in SYS$LOADABLE_IMAGES too much, but some folks might enjoy that sort of thing. ---Robert Deininger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. ---Bertrand Russell ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Only a few experimenters derive sufficient satisfaction solely from meeting the technical challenge of devising sensitive equipment, regardless of whether it actually detects anything. ---John Gribbin & Martin Rees ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The average quantum mechanic is no more philosophical than the average motor mechanic. ---John Polkinghorne ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No set of equations explains why there _is_ a universe. ---John Gribbin & Martin Rees ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It seems every piece of Digital equipment has at least one MMJ connector. ---Stan Quayle ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is one thing to be cryptic, another to be shortsighted. ---Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Indeed, there was a sequence in which two appalling blonde children sang a pop song with the words `I'm no kin to a monkey' which I wouldn't have missed for worlds. ---John Maynard Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no way I shall ever be as certain of anything as James Burke is of everything, but we have to try. ---John Maynard Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Statistics is that branch of mathematics which enables a man to do twenty experiments a year and publish one false result in Nature. ---Barnet Woolf ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would find it easier to draw this essay to a conclusion if I knew what conclusion to draw. ---John Maynard Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...some philosophies make it easier than others to correct one's errors. ---John Maynard Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sometimes, distance lends clarity. ---John Maynard Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...rage is no substitute for argument. ---John Maynard Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But it is one thing to say that scientific knowledge cannot be certain, and quite another that there is no difference between science and myth. ---John Maynard Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...scientific theories are not the only kind of ideas we need. ---John Maynard Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...a crucial distinction must be made between the psychological sources of a theory and the testing of it. ---John Maynard Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is the function of a scientific theory to account for experience.... It is the function of a myth to provide a source and justification for values. ---John Maynard Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If we insist that scientific theories convey moral messages, the result will be bad morality or bad science, and most probably both. ---John Maynard Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have received more hate mail because of publicly displaying body hair than for any other statement or representation that I have made. ---Mistress Marsha ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Listen, buddy, if I could tell you in a minute what I did, it wouldn't be worth the Nobel Prize. ---Richard P. Feynman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are probably more different attitudes to quantum mechanics than there are quantum physicists. This is not inconsistent because certain quantum physicists hold different views at the same time. ---Roger Penrose ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you really BELIEVE in quantum mechanics, then you cannot take it SERIOUSLY. ---Bob Wald ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But just because there is something very puzzling going on does not mean that we shall never be able to understand it. ---Roger Penrose ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The theological status of naked singularities must be dramatically lowered if they can be man-made. ---John D. Barrow and Joseph Silk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Naked singularities do not qualify as deities. ---John D. Barrow and Joseph Silk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bei seinem Besuch in Kuba hat der belgische Außenminister und Motorradfan Louis Michel für Verwirrung im Protokoll gesorgt: Der Brüsseler Außenamtschef und Vertreter der derzeitigen EU-Ratspräsidentschaft knatterte lieber auf einer Harley Davidson durch die Hauptstadt Havanna, als sich in den sonst für Staatsgäste schicklichen Luxuslimousinen kutschieren zu lassen. Mit Polizeieskorte und von seinem kubanischen Kollegen Felipe Pérez Roque im Auto gefolgt fuhr Michel zusammen mit Bikern eines örtlichen Clubs über die Strandpromenade Malecon - allerdings in gemäßigtem Tempo. ---http://www.tagesschau.de/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alas, few philosophers have ever understood how complex is the notion of simplicity. ---John North ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- History, though, is made of reputations, not of merit. ---John North ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fashions, on the other hand, can be more powerful than reason. ---John North ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...we cannot discount the place of the human psyche in modern cosmology. ---John North ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The art of turning astronomy to poetic advantage is now virtually lost, although as readers of Algernon Charles Swinburne will know, `astrolabe' is one of the few words in English that rhymes with `babe'. ---John North ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the latest motion picture to raise serious issues about the MPAA's credibility when it comes to assigning ratings. Serving Sara is classified as PG-13. In order to achieve that distinction, the film could not show a view of Elizabeth Hurley's breasts (at one point, she flashes them with her back to the camera). However, there is apparently nothing wrong with doing all sorts of unmentionable things to a poor cow. Am I the only one who finds it less offensive to get a frontal view of a topless Elizabeth Hurley than to see Matthew Perry with his arm inserted to the shoulder in a cow's rectum? The logic applied by the MPAA boggles the mind. ---James Berardinelli ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The word 'genius' isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein. ---Joe Theisman (quarterback and sports analyst) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But then I'd use teco to get my lawnmower started. ---Elliott Roper ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's one thing for Eddie Murphy to provide the voice of a jackass; it's another for Donald Sutherland to lend his vocal abilities to someone who looks like a cross between Donald Pleasance and Fu Manchu. ---James Berardinelli ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An old Oregon rancher once told me, there are three types of men in the world. One type learns from books. One type learns from observations. And one type just has to urinate on the electric fence himself. ---Carl Barney ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. ---Eden Philpotts ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. ---Jorge Luis Borges ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But Divinities was an instrumental album that was free as a bird. You can do things within the instrumental context without being misconstrued. It's a whole lot easier for Beethoven to make concept albums, if you can refer to his symphonies as concept albums, which I guess you could. But if he had started writing the lyrics, people would have been saying, `Hey Ludwig, I think you're getting a bit too clever here.' ---Ian Anderson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dylan stars as Jack Fate, a singer once famous, now on the skids, who is recruited by promoter John Goodman to do a benefit concert in a war zone of a Third World nation (downtown Los Angeles supplied the locations). ---??? [from a review of the film "Masked and Anonymous" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A million here, a million there, sooner or later it is real money. ---U.S. Senator Dirksen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...the voice of an animated fish is not a role model for sexuality. ---Roger Ebert [criticising the protest against Disney for using Ellen DeGeneres as the voice-over for a character in "Finding Nemo"] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between. ---Oscar Wilde ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It don't mean a thing if you can't get that Ping.... ---Duke Ellington ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To this day, more Americans have heard about the Dalai Lama from Richard Gere than from any other source. ---Roger Ebert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Personally, I got tenure before I started messing with quantum gravity, and this approach has some real advantages. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, please bear in mind that getting tenure is only half the battle. Getting tenure while keeping your soul is the hard part. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There's an infinite number of conferences, and you should go to them. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I never embarked on such a project, but remember working out how it might be done while driving the tractor. ---David Evans ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AUTOGEN cannot predict the future. It is up to the sysmgr to use his knowledge of the system's workload when using AUTOGEN. ---Alan E. Feldman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...there are few things more poignant than an ancient skateboarder. ---Roger Ebert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anybody who wants to know anything about themselves or their own country should spend at least 24 hours in the local jail. ---Joan Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. ---Donald Knuth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What else is there? Sex and physics. ---Dennis Overbye ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is possible to transcend genres, but I think you have to go through them, not around them. ---Roger Ebert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't know how we got this image, maybe we wore too many robes in the '70s... ---Geddy Lee ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The British strike me as frivolous wuthout gaiety and earnest without seriousness,... ---Theodore Dalrymple [in an article in The Spectator on why he is moving to France] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are more amazing shots in German films from the 1920s than in most new releases. ---Roger Ebert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I can resist anything except temptation. ---Oscar Wilde ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The statement that "it can never happen" is not an acceptable programming approach. You must assume it can happen and be in control when it does. ---Ada 95 Quality and Style Guidelines, US DoD AJPO ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My pants are not as tight any more, I don't open my shirt so far and I don't pick up the underwear. ---Tom Jones acknowledges the passing of time ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But, I don't think one can really understand gauge theory from just an encyclopedia try. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you know the wave function of the universe, why aren't you rich? ---Murray Gell-Mann [to James Hartle] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But you make heavy use of capitals of various height, which looks already suspicious. ---Arnold Neumaier ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [...] ein gut konfigurierter Windows-Rechner, an dem niemand herumspielt, läuft auch über mehrere Tage stabil. (c't 14/2004, S. 147) ---c't 14/2004, S. 147 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- in the '70s, they converted movies to comics. Now, they do it the other way around. ---James Berardinelli ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for the schoolchildren of Texas. ---Texas governor James Ferguson, 1917, explaining why he vetoed a bill funding the teaching of foreign languages in Texas schools. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A supercomputer is a device for turning compute-bound problems into I/O-bound problems. ---Ken Batcher ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At the time, I had a girlfriend and a cat and a band---everything. ---Yngwie Malmsteen ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The scene where on-tour McNabb emerges from an East German service station holding `a bratwurst, a pint glass of screwdriver and a porno mag', only to slip in some oil and fall flat on his face, says more about rock star hubris than Eric Clapton's entire autobiography. ---Andrew Male [in a review of the book MERSEYBEAST by and about Ian McNabb] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bei Asiaten denken immer alle, man kann Karate. Ich bin eigentlich noch nie angepöbelt worden, weil ich asiatisch aussehe, nur gelegentlich, weil ich bei der FDP bin." ---Philipp Rösler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One irony of life is that girls and boys rush through their teenage years as quickly as possible to achieve adulthood, then spend the rest of their lives trying to re-live those years. --- James Berardinelli ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Astonishingly, bloggers have also weighed in: among my regular reads, we find responses from Dr. Free-Ride, PZ, and The Quantum Pontiff. (Bloggers have much more colorful monikers than respectable folk.) ---Sean Carroll ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some students ... have been taught that their code should be commented; unfortunately, they aren't always taught that the comments should actually say something useful. ---Richard Maine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment. ---Mark Twain ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Programming is an exercise in being precise in telling the computer exactly what to do. The first step in that is having a precise notion in your own mind. ---Richard Maine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Many rock concerts are actually louder than the Big Bang. ---Peter Coles ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was all a lot easier in the good old days when there was no data... ---Peter Coles ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- USENET was the first and greatest moment of massive connectivity of a million individual minds. It is the first and greatest moment of humanity thinking together (or at least all murmuring simultaneously). It was, if nothing else, a giant cocktail party. However trivial and tripe most of the thoughts may have been, there is a larger gestalt in its mass. And unlike the information in the internet decades later, USENET is nicely flat. The whole is more than just the sum of its individual parts. ---itfitzme at http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The basic functionality of Google Groups is lower, and its implementation far more ignorant, than, say, a 1990 version of Majordomo. ---RobertPlamondon at http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bele's totally invisible ship perhaps is the most noticeable effect of the biggest budget cut in the original series. ---http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Let_That_Be_Your_Last_Battlefield ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The penchant for kitsch is something that gay men and born-again Christians share. [http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/02/creation-museum-201002] ---A. A. Gill ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It all gets good when the leading man arrives. Adam comes on looking like the Hispanic bass player for a Janis Joplin backup band, with a lot of hair and a tan. He looks a bit stoned. As well he might be, because heâs all on his own in Eden. Nothing can do him any harm, and he's got the whole pharmacopoeia at armâs reach. And then you get to Eve, a demure, foxy little girl who could be Juliet in a Guatemalan school play. Her long hair is meticulously glued to her pert and perky breasts. Adam has his as yet unnecessary organ of generation decorously concealed behind foliage. There is something wincingly salacious about this bearded hippie and his schoolgirl mate. And he has what looks suspiciously like a belly button. [http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/02/creation-museum-201002] ---A. A. Gill ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 A. Heinlein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the "social justice" movement among Christians. For example, the conservative word "volunteer" is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word "comrade" is used three times, "laborer(s)" is used 13 times, "labored" 15 times, and "fellow" (as in "fellow worker") is used 55 times. ---http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [...] a posteriori reasoning: it's not the same as talking out of your posterior, but is sometimes close to it. ---Peter Coles ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So if you get things wrong by many sigma, it's a professional embarrassment, but need not have major consequences for the universe. ---John Peacock ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just because I write a blog doesn't mean I'm not a Luddite at heart! ---Peter Coles ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I won't participate in debates on scientific matters where the answer requires more data. ---Allan Sandage ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bread, it took me three years to really understand how that works, but that's coming fairly well now. ---Allan Sandage ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's easy to ignore Californian culture because there isn't any. Do you detect any Jan And Dean influence in my songs? ---Richard Thompson [on living in California] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, I coached my son't team in Los Angeles. If you have a European accent of any description then you are the coach---you don't need any other qualification. ---Richard Thompson [on living in California] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And for a long time it seemed that we were going to have to accept inflation by default. We have these deep puzzles, inflation offers a solution, we have no other solution, so by default we accept it. That's not the way I like to do physics. I like to have an experiment that forces us to accept it. ---Jim Peebles [http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/25507.html] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. ---Niels Bohr ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blade Runner is Radiohead. Star Wars is Oasis. ---Noel Gallagher ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For years, I thought it was called "The SKY'S In Love With You". And I thought: Fucking hell, man, that's so psychedelic. ---Noel Gallagher [on a similarly named Burt Bacharach song] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In cosmology, this state preparation step is often so obvious that it is easy to overlook. ---Max Tegmark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...until the measure problem is solved, inflation strictly speaking cannot make any testable predictions at all, thus failing to qualify as a scientific theory in Popper's sense. ---Max Tegmark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture. ---Steven Pinker ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture. Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics. Yet pundits continue to hallucinate trends in freak events, like the Norwegian sniper (who shot all those young people on an island) and make wildly innumerate comparisons, such as between Afghanistan and Vietnam, or between today's human trafficking and the African slave trade. It's a holdover of the literary sensibilities of our science-flunking intellectual elite, who would be aghast if someone didn't know who Milton was, but cheerfully flaunt their ignorance of basic science and mathematics. I lobbied ? unsuccessfully ? for a course requirement at Harvard in statistical and logical reasoning. ---Steven Pinker ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The titles of papers in this conference, as in many humanities talks, almost always included a colon. They're of this nature: "Attempted witty title: explanatory subtitle." ---Jerry Coyne ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The titles of papers in this conference, as in many humanities talks, almost always included a colon. They're of this nature: "Attempted witty title: explanatory subtitle." ---Jerry Coyne ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A colleague who met me strolling rather aimlessly in the beautiful streets of Copenhagen said to me in a friendly manner, "You look very unhappy," whereupon I answered fiercely, "How can one look happy when he is thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect? ---Wolfgang Pauli ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skeptics about exotic physics might not be hugely impressed by a theoretical argument to explain the absence of particles that are themselves only hypothetical. Preventive medicine can readily seem 100 percent effective against a disease that doesn't exist! ---Martin Rees [on inflation] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why not visit Sweden this year. See the wonderful telephone system. ---Monthy Python ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This book is superbly well written, grammatically correct (except, perhaps, for one application of a semi-colon with which I felt uncomfortable, but I only spotted five such occurrences), and accurately produced. ---Elizabeth Griffin [in a book review in The Observatory] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The spelling is American, but the overall blend of enthusiasm and diffidence could only be British. I like this book. ---Fiona Vincent [in a book review in The Observatory] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The stars do not predict our future, but we can predict the future of the stars,.... ---Robert P. Kirshner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The scientist's job is to take something beautiful and turn it into a graph. ---Robert P. Kirshner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Uncertainty is not a good thing, but knowing the uncertainty is. ---Robert P. Kirshner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...there are many ways to disagree but only one way to agree. ---Robert P. Kirshner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...there are ways to go wrong that statistics don't include. ---Robert P. Kirshner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When scientists have two lists of things.... They will plot a graph. ---Robert P. Kirshner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [The Hubble constant] is measured in astronomers' units of kilometers per second per megaparsec. This peculiar form of units keeps the physicists at a respectful distance to avoid contamination. ---Robert P. Kirshner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. ---Aaron Levenstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ages of rocks give a different perspective than the Rock of Ages. ---Robert P. Kirshner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When you use the work of others, if they are wrong, you get the wrong answer too. ---Robert P. Kirshner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As the Irish have many words for rain, and the Inuit many words for snow, astronomers have many words for error. ---Robert P. Kirshner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just because your measurements agree with one another is not a guarantee you're doing things right. ---Robert P. Kirshner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's hard to convey depth and subtlety in a tweet.... ---Phil Plait ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before we start talking about other universes, it's crucial that we're clear on what we mean by our own universe. ---Max Tegmark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...sarcasm is really, really hard to communicate well on a billboard. ---P. Z. Myers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, the trouble with coincidences is that sometimes they tell you something and sometimes they don't. ---Mike Turner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Arguing by analogy is a dangerous matter, especially when applied to etymology. ---Michael Quinion ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't think you have ever lived until you have experienced the sheer adrenaline rush of seeing a German heavy rock band behave like a troupe of eccentric moustachioed gypsy tumblers. ---Every Record Tells a Story (blog) [on the Scorpions live in the 1970s] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So wirkt etwa bei "Treasure Island" die Piratenthematik in Verbindung mit Progmetal einfach nicht plausibel. ---von einer Plattenkritik in der Zeitschrift "eclipsed" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If men dressed up in their mums [sic] clothes with shaggy permed mullets wearing make up were more successful than I was with women, what hope was there?! ---everyrecordtellsastory.com/2012/07/27/bret-michaels-every-rose-has-its/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way ---Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think that later that night I stood in a tree and declared I was the Golden God because Moonie and Roy Harper had driven a car between two palm trees and couldn't open the fucking doors to get out. George Harrison had karate chopped Bonzo's wedding cake or 30th birthday cake or 25th birthday cake at some party and Bonzo decided it was time for George Harrison to go into the swimming pool. We were children! And there was some vaginal relaxant for cows somewhere being inhaled by somebody. You want to know about what it was like? It was fantastic! Insanely gorgeous! ---Robert Plant remembers the 70s ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Phillip Helbig Says: December 7, 2012 at 3:43 pm Speaking of statistics, Bayes was a Presbyterian minister. Good thing he wasn't a Catholic monk, since in that case he could have been a prior. :-) telescoper Says: December 7, 2012 at 4:04 pm As such in all likelihood he'd have been interested in posteriors. ---comments on telescoper.wordpress.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are only a few benighted places on the planet, the United States among them, where people believe that flushing out the urogenital tract with scented water is beneficial. ---P.Z. Myers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can't have everything, can you? Where would you put it? ---Lemmy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When punk swept in, it was prejudice incarnate, ignorance hailed as virtue. ---Steve Hackett ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We rarely converse, but I say "Good morning, John" if I see him. He's a very nice fellow, his wife is very nice. I don't even think he knows I play guitar or anything. I try to keep it down. ---Joe Bonamassa [who just happens to live next-door to Johnny Rotten] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A hundred years hence all this work of mine will be utterly superseded: but I am getting the fun of it now. ---Henry Norris Russell ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- She's so fucking normal. She fixed my toilet. ---Tricky (on Cyndi Lauper) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As a cosmologist I prefer not to think about the Universe. ---Peter Coles ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's more a question of budget than a question of wisdom. ---Christoph Kohnert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ex-Uno-Generalsekretär Kofi Annan war zugegen, wurde allerdings häufig mit Morgan Freeman verwechselt. ---Spiegel Online über den Wiener Opernball 2014 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The PhD defense is much like losing your virginity, vastly overrated. It looms big in your future, but once in the past you note that nobody gives a shit. ---Sabine Hossenfelder ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We trained two starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) to fly in a wind tunnel whilst wearing respirometry masks. ---http://jeb.biologists.org/content/204/19/3311 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ability to fill in people's names in form letters stopped being impressive or looking personal in the 1970s. ---Brad Templeton ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For example, in Disney films from the 1990s onward, British accents are generally employed to serve one of two purposes: slapstick comedy or evil genius. ---Wikipedia (Acting and accents) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Programming is the art of telling another human being what one wants the computer to do. ---Donald Knuth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Understanding galaxy evolution is such a small thing to worry about, compared to the rest of her life. ---Pippa Goldschmidt, in The Falling Sky ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was 14 when I first got married. My wife was too old for me; she was 17. ---Jerry Lee Lewis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm a real klutz computationally. ---Kip Thorne ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saying it's obvious doesn't make it obvious. ---Sabine Hossenfelder ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have to say this for Germany: after the war, they openly faced the horrors of the Nazi regime and cleaned house, and to this day have a strong aversion to any proponents of that vileness. In the US, we let our war criminals walk free and profit mightily. ---P. Z. Myers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I love watching him play with classic grip. He's the next member to get a solo, and I can't help but notice he has tucked his T-shirt into his jeans. Interesting. I didn't expect that from the drummer. ---http://mikeladano.com/2014/12/30/ review-journey-live-in-houston-escape-tour-1981-cddvd-set/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The plaster cast of David at the Victoria and Albert Museum has a detachable plaster fig leaf which is displayed nearby. The fig leaf was created in response to Queen Victoria's shock upon first viewing the statue's nudity, and was hung on the figure prio r to royal visits, using two strategically placed hooks. ---http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_(Michelangelo) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [T]he term [sodomy] has little modern usage outside Africa, Islamic countries, and the United States. ---http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just because it's something with quantum and something with gravity doesn't mean it's quantum gravity. ---Sabine Hossenfelder ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are many things I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it. ---Umberto Eco ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a difference between having an open mind and an empty head. ---Matt Strassler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [...] a given observer can reduce entropy by much more than the amount of information her brain can store. ---Max Tegmark (When I read that, I thought "Yeah, I've known some women like that!") ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You should of course be skeptical of any claim that an experimental result reveals something about the deep nature of reality. ---Ted Bunn ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Still, a book of theory, even about Wonder Woman and bondage, has a limited audience. ---Noah Berlatsky http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/ point-academic-books-publishing-writing-literature-96610/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our research shows 64% of millennials regularly communicate only using emojis. ---David Webber (Intelligent Environments' managing director) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...hitting notes that made Robert Plant sound like Leonard Cohen ---Brian Hiatt (from Rolling Stone; about Geddy Lee in the 1970s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am grateful to the organizing committee of this conference for giving me only 15 minutes to talk, so that I don't have to try to explain Witten's idea. ---Steven Weinberg ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We never really did talk about cosmological models. ---Allan Sandage (remembering his time with Hubble) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Often I would knock on his hotel door, which he kept propped open with a security jamb, and he'd be getting blown by both of those girls, all while he was talking and doing business on the phone and rolling joints and smoking and having a drink. Crosby had incredible sexual energy. It got to be such a routine scene in his room, I'd stop by with someone and go, "Aw, fuck, he's getting blown again. Oh, dear, let's give him a minute." ---Graham Nash (on touring with David Crosby in the 1970s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyone who has read an inept student paper, a bad Google translation, or an interview with George W Bush can appreciate that standards of usage are desirable in many arenas of communication. ---Steven Pinker ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Turns out there's a direct bus from the astrophysics thesis presentation to the tea-scones-lecture on prostitution in Early Modern Stockholm at the Vasa warship museum. Living the dream. ---Martin Rundkvist (http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/ 2015/02/02/january-pieces-of-my-mind-2-2/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Forgive the Russians, ignore the Germans, punish the French. ---Condoleezza Rice ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, his mistake was to think that it was a mistake. Steven Weinberg [on Einstein's "blunder"] http://www.c-span.org/video/?302584-3/book-discussion-lake-views-world-universe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. ---Steven Weinberg ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Stevie Nicks and I] used to get grand pianos craned into our bedrooms. But I didn't redesign my [hotel-room] colour scheme. Stevie did for a while. ---Christine McVie on touring with Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is not easy to determine in just what sense the pagans actually believed in their own religion. ---Steven Weinberg ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Still, I think we know what we mean when we say that Newton's laws of gravitation and motion are more fundamental than Kelpler's three laws of planetary motion. The great success of Newton was in _explaining_ the motions of the planets, not merely describing them. Newton did not explain gravitation, and he knew that he had not, but that is the way it always is with explanation---something is always left for future explanation. ---Steven Weinberg ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I know that I am mortal and the creature of a day, but when I search out the massed wheeling circles of the stars, my feet no longer touch the Earth, but, side by side with Zeus himself, I take my fill of ambrosia, the food of the gods. ---Plato ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is odd that Descartes thought that a God who allowed earthquakes and plagues would not allow a philosopher to be deceived. ---Steven Weinberg ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Beware of factoids without evidence to back them up. Also beware of science factoids presented by nonscience sites. Heck, beware of them even from science sites; we make mistakes sometimes. ---Phil Plait http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/09/22/earth_without_water_nope.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's truly remarkable that in a technologically advanced society where we can land a probe on a comet, recreate the conditions of the early universe fractions of a second after the Big Bang and communicate virtually instantaneously across the globe, it's still nearly impossible to transfer a multimedia-enabled PowerPoint file from one computer to another and have it work first time. And Microsoft certainly isn't blameless when it comes to this lack of portability. ---Philip Moriarty https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/in-praise-of-microsoft-powerpoint ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- He [Thelonius Monk] seemed to communicate with the outside world largely through his choice of hat. ---Peter Coles https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2015/09/26/thelonious-monk-misterioso/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Power corrupts, but it's also too easily acquired by those who are corrupt already. ---Peter Coles https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/the-dangerous-myth-of-the-great-man-of-science/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well those impressions have evolved as time passed. When I first met him [Harlow Shapley], as an undergraduate, I thought him an absolutely fabulous, charming person, extremely vivid, active, sociable. He used to lead dances at his house Sunday evenings, call the turns or whatever you do for the Virginia reel. It's turned me off folk dancing ever since. ---Jesse Greenstein https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4642 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When you lecture about anything, if you can't say it in ten minutes, it's not worth saying. If you can't say it in five minutes, it's not important. ---Bart Bok via Jesse Greenstein: https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4642 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Am Ende besitzt man nur die Düfte. Eventuell auch das klirrende Geräusch der Flaschen, wenn der Brauer den Getränkelaster mit Leergut belud, oder das der Glühkopfmotoren der Fischerboote im Tre-Bröders-Sund. Dinge dieser Art. Blind verlasse ich mich heute nur noch auf Erinnerungen, die nie dokumentiert wurden. Nicht, weil die Fotografien lügen würden, sondern weil sie einem im Gegenteil jene halben Lügen verbieten, welche die echte Hälfte aller wahren Erinnerungen bilden. ---Fredrik Sjöberg (aus dem Roman Der Rosinenkönig, übersetzt von Paul Berf) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Falls mich nicht zu viel Pech verfolgt, habe ich meine Entscheidung getroffen, und diese lautet in Kürze: 1. Niemals eine feste Stelle mit Gehalt anzustreben. 2. Mir finanzielle Unabhängigkeit zu erarbeiten. 3. Zu meinem eigenen großen Vergnügen sowie für den Fortschritt der Wissenschaft im Allgemeinen zu studieren und nicht für die Interessen eingiger weniger Personen. 4. Das Leben auf möglichst großzügige Art zu genießen, womit ich meine, zu tun, was mir gefällt, zu reisen, wohin ich will, und zu studieren, was ich will. ---Gustaf Eisen (zitiert von Fredrik Sjöberg (aus dem Roman Der Rosinenkönig, übersetzt von Paul Berf)) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For every complex physical phenomenon there is a simple, elegant, compelling, wrong explanation. ---Thomas Gold ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The idea that redshifts are kinematic is a good one, as long as they are. ---Nick Kaiser ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Philosophy has to give way to observations. ---George Ellis [Texas Symposium 2013] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The essence of cosmology is statistics. ---George McVittie ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No one understands it; we just know that Chip Arp is wrong. ---Virginia Trimble [1t the 1999 gravitational-lens conference in Boston] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Genius hesitates. ---Carlo Rovelli ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...before experiments, measurements, mathematics and rigorous deductions, science is above all about visions. Science begins with a vision. Scientific thought is fed by the capacity to `see' things differently than they have previously been seen. ---Carlo Rovelli ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A set of vibrations, as in the switched-on hippy world of the 1960s. A world of happenings, not things. ---Carlo Rovelli [on quantum mechanics] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Als "Star Wars" ins Kino kam, verriet Pornhub dort, dass öfter nach "Princess Leia" als nach "Anal Lightsaber" gesucht werde. --- http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/ pornhub-und-seine-pr-und-nun-die-masturbations-charts-a-1071402.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But Feynman had a genuine broad interest, of course. I wondered about Murray Gell-Mann at times. ---Wallace Sargent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I wanted to go back to Britain, or at least to go somewhere else. A prime consid eration was the lack of women at Caltech, which I was not used to. ---Wallace Sargent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, Herstmonceux Castle. There were lots of young woman assistants and there were lots of rhododendron bushes to get up to hanky panky in, etcetera, so it was really very nice. ---Wallace Sargent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No track goes beyond nine minutes, so while it's a long album [two CDs, 34 tracks, more than 2 hours], it's packed with succinct, concise writing. ---PROG magazine puts things into perspective in a review of Dream Theater's The Astonishing ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would rather have question that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned. ---(possibly) Richard Feynman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time. ---Blaise Pascal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. ---W. Somerset Maugham ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. ---Ray Bradbury ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This paper will no doubt be found interesting by those who take an interest in it. ---John Dalton ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyone who rides in a limo can't comprehend my movie. ---Dennis Hopper, cancelling the deal with Crosby, Stills, and Nash for the music to Easy Rider ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The previous day, over lunch, Roger twisted his fork, and took a snail from its home, and ate it. Then he expressed concern over Dylan. ---Interview with Roger MgGuinn, Melody Maker, 8 May 1971 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I grew up in a traditional middle-class San Diego surfing community, but I fell in love with country and bluegrass. It was completely out of context to the idyllic lifestyle portrayed by The Beach Boys. ---Chris Hillman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A supercomputer is a device for turning compute-bound problems into I/O-bound problems. ---Ken Batcher ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From my perspective, a conscious person is simply food, rearranged. ---Max Tegmark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Beatles are different. ...they did a little bit of everything. Not only that, but they did much of it before anyone else had even thought of it. ---https://everyrecordtellsastory.com/2017/01/24/the-beatles-playlist-liner-notes/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The lack of understanding of something is not evidence for God. It's evidence of a lack of understanding. ---Lawrence M. Krauss ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it. ---Dan Ariely ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. ---Theodosius Dobzhansky ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. ---T. S. Eliot ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After leaving the band [Midnight Oil], he started Wicked Weasel, a direct marketing business specialising in micro bikinis. The company has built an international reputation for female swimwear and underwear. ---https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Gifford ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I like Scandinavians, skiing, swimming and socialists who realize it is our business to promote social progress by peaceful methods. I dislike football, economists, eugenicists, Fascists, Stalinists, and Scottish conservatives. I think that sex is necessary and bankers are not. ---Lancelot Thomas Hogben ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everybody has a testing environment. Some people are lucky enough enough to have a totally separate environment to run production in. ---Paul Sture ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm an excellent housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce, I keep the house. ---Zsa Zsa Gabor ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You cannot do physics or cosmology without an assumed philosophical basis. ---George Ellis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Precision is great in our data, but not in our assumptions. ---Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes, A Fortunate Universe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is the theory that tells what we observe. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When the cosmos wakes, if ever she does, she will find herself not the single beloved of her maker, but merely a little bubble adrift on the boundless and bottomless ocean of being. ---Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anybody with a MODPARAMS.DAT longer than 10 lines is either a genius or a fool. ---C. W. Hobbs ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Divergent series are in general something fatal, and it is a disgrace to base any proof on them. ---Niels Henrik Abel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would as soon think of reverting to Newtonian theory as of dropping the cosmical constant. ---Arthur Eddington ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bringing up the myth that Einstein was an outsider is itself one of the things that marks an outsider. ---Sabine Hossenfelder ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No one trusts a model except the man who wrote it; everyone trusts an observation, except the man who made it. ---Harlow Shapley ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it. ---Richard Feynman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Time is information we don't have. Time is our ignorance. ---Carlo Rovelli ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feynman would mock the fuzzy-headed philosophy of the place as he soaked in a hot tub and flirted with naked sunbathers. ---https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/ 2000/07/the-jaguar-and-the-fox/378264/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back in the days of Josip Tito, Yugoslavia was famous for having seven neighbors, six provinces, five nationalities, four languages, three religions, two alphabets---and one political party. ---Ken Kukec ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no scientifically based proof that the unique physical universe has to be probable. ---George Ellis & Roy Maartens (gr-qc/0211082) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My knowledge of Japanese culture is extensive, but comes exclusively from watching porn videos. ---pseudonymous internet pundit ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I mistook him for a Swedish sailor. ---Nora Barnacle's first impression of James Joyce ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...an artificial quasar, consisting of a tin can with a 3/32-inch hole drilled in one end, and containing a 60-watt light bulb. ---Charles C. Dyer and Robert C. Roeder, JRASC, 75, 227--236, 1981 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The problem with the cosmological parameters is that we do not know their values. ---Eric Linder ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Queen had that market [for sports anthems, e.g. "We Are the Champions"] sewn up, which was hysterical, because Freddie Mercury hated sport; he knew nothing about it at all. If you'd mentioned Arsenal to Freddie, he'd have thought it was something to do with gay sex. ---Elton John ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pay attention. Someday, you'll be the last one who remembers. ---Virginia Trimble ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The larger our ignorance, the stronger the magnetic field. ---Lodewijk Woltjer ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The evolution of the world can be compared to a display of fireworks that has just ended: some few red wisps, ashes and smoke. Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the slow fading of sund, and we try to recall the vanishing brilliance of the origin of the worlds. ---Georges Lemaître ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As for myself, I am here to proclaim my opinions and discoveries and bad jokes. ---Martin Rundkvist ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So glad I retired before I had to use JIRA. ---Steve Lionel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cool sein ist eine Haltung, die ist wie abgeklärt wirken bevor man aufgeklärt wurde. ---Roger Willemsen [Interview bei Willkommen Österreich] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Life is a fairly well written play, except for the third act. ---Tennessee Williams ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Puns are the highest form of literature. ---Alfred Hitchcock ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We shall dispense with the starry heavens, if we propose to obtain a real knowledge of astronomy. ---Plato ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kids fantasize about food. Young people fantasize about sex. Adults fantasize about time. ---Zach Weinersmith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TeX was only supposed to be for my secretary and myself. ---Don Knuth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I write an average of five new programs every week. Poets have to write poems. I have to write computer programs. ---Don Knuth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ultimate test of whether I understand something is if I can explain it to a computer. ---Don Knuth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A person's success in life is determined by having a high minimum, not a high maximum. ---Don Knuth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. ---Don Knuth (probably) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Most of our life is spent in failure. ---Cédric Villani ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I can have very meaningful experiences even if there are other people who are smarter than me. ---Max Tegmark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Any universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a mind able to understand it. ---John D. Barrow ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While we have no reason to expect that our position in the universe is special in _every_ way, we would be equally misled were we to assume that it could not be special in _any_ way. ---John D. Barrow ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance. ---Robert R. Coveyou ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from you. ---Ashleigh Brilliant ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We doen alles voor de laatste keer. ---Godfried Bomans ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The wonder is not that the field of the stars is so vast, but that man has measured it. ---Anatole France ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Ph.D. in theoretical computer science left me utterly unqualified for the job of webmaster. ---Scott Aaronson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ... mixing congas with guitars is a win-win situation---especially with women. ---Carlos Santana ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For the very first show, the audience consisted of a lot of old-age pensioners who actually thought they were coming to see a real circus. They were a bit puzzled ---Terry Jones ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The unfamiliar is not the same as the improbable. ---Martin Rees ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library. ---Jorge Luis Borges ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there is a simple curve, there must be a simple explanation. ---George Gamow ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It seems that scientists are often attracted to beautiful theories in the way that insects are attracted to flowers---not by logical deduction, but by something like a sense of smell. ---Steven Weinberg (Physics Today, 58, 11, 31--35, November 2005) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Einstein was not only a great man, but a good one. ---Steven Weinberg (Physics Today, 58, 11, 31--35, November 2005) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Statistics can only help your brain. They can't replace it. ---Stacy McGaugh ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Great art should make you think, but should not necessarily tell you what you should think. ---Peter Coles ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [The late Prince Philip] was said to have so little patience with horse racing that he had his top hat fitted with a radio so that he could listen to cricket matches when he escorted the queen to her favorite spectator sport. ---The New York Times ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Since becoming an emeritus professor at Princeton, I have fondly returned to some of my childhood interests. ---J. Richard Gott III ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The reader can raise objections as he goes througgh the book. The accumulation of scientific knowledge perhaps gives more continuity from one age of science to another than Kuhn recognizes. I doubt if the separation of "paradigm" creation from the doing of "normal science" is as clear as he implies. ---Richard Schlegel [review of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Physics Today 16, 4, 69, (1963)] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ritchie Blackmore was invited to play but refused to participate---I think he was put off by my jazz substitutions for Good King Wenceslas. ---Peter-John Vettese ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm really bad at quite a lot of instruments. ---David Gilmour ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was very into folk music. ---David Gilmour ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm not as ambitious as I was. I've had that. It's been fantastic. ---David Gilmour ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In those days we didn't do edits on multitracks. ---Brian May [on recording "Bohemian Rhapsody"] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The thing about numbers is that there are always much bigger ones. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I do not know whether young radio astronomers regard themselves as being especially "with it", but if so I hope they don't regard the rest of us as squares. ---Richard Woolley ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am always surprised when a young man tells me he wants to work at cosmology; I think of cosmology as something that happens to one, not something one can choose. ---William H. McCrea ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you haven't had a COVID-19 vaccine, the safest type of sexual activity during the COVID-19 pandemic is masturbation. Be sure to wash your hands and any sex toys used, both before and after masturbating. You might also consider engaging in sexual activity with partners via text, photos or videos, ideally using an encrypted platform to provide privacy protection. Beyond sex, there are other ways to create or maintain intimacy with a partner at a distance. Go on virtual dates together, share music you enjoy, write letters to one another or dress up for each other. Be creative. ---William F. Marshall, III M.D. [official advice from the Mayo Clinic] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's a good idea to have a few people at the top who know what's going on. ---Nelson Beebe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When enough years have passed, a photograph becomes the only thing you remember about the day it was taken. ---Christopher J. Snowdon [in a review of Peter Jackson's Get Back for Quillette] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You start off playing guitars to get girls and end up talking with middle-aged men about your fingernails. ---Ed Gerhard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know. ---Bertrand Russell ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A lot of thermodynamics is really `thermostatics'. ---John Baez ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Das Stillen in der Öffentlichkeit ist seit 2018 in allen U.S.-Bundesstaaten legal. Sie sollten das Stillen in Restaurants und Bars bzw. in weniger liberalen Gegenden gleichwohl unterlassen. ---Reisehinweis des Auswärtigen Amtes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One volume is all you really need, the nuances of blending pickups and stuff are all lost when you lay into Bad Moon Rising for the 1147th time. ---rct ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it. ---Roger Ebert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [I'm] Sick of people calling everything in crypto a Ponzi scheme. Some crypto projects are pump and dump schemes, while others are pyramid schemes. Others are just standard issue fraud. Others are just middlemen skimming off the top. Stop glossing over the diversity in the industry." ---Pat Dennis, 2022-04-25 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyone may submit a paper to be considered for publication in MNRAS. There are no restrictions based on nationality, institutional affiliation, qualifications etc. ---MNRAS Instructions to Authors (accessed 2022-12-20) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As usual when you discover something new, the response comes in three waves. First, this is nonsense. Second, it is trivial. Third, this is important, and we did it before you did. ---Freeman Dyson [https://ww.ias.edu/ideas/2012/dyson-prisoners-dilemma] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The reason I seek a higher intelligence in outer space is because I do not find it on Earth. ---Avi Loeb ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Of course, back in the Seventies, audiences assumed that whatever happened on the stage was intentional. ---Rick Wakeman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When the most enjoyable part of a live performance is the curry that you eat in the middle of it, you know that it's time to start thinking about moving on. ---Rick Wakeman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the years, Judas Priest have had a growing penchant for lyrics that basically just describe some sort of apocalyptic cartoon character. ---https://heavymetaloverload.com/2023/04/06/judas-priest-the-sentinel/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I felt the need to reconsider my position in life, and a jazz club was just the right place to do just that. ---Jerry Leiber ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Urvater der Harmonie ---Beethoven über Bach ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wir sind alle Stümper gegen ihn. ---Schumann über Bach ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Das erstaunlichste musikalische Wunder aller Zeiten. ---Wagner über Bach ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bach ist Anfang und Ende aller Musik. ---Max Reger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Compute science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. ---Edsger Wybe Dijkstra ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This happens all the time in philosophy. People go back and forth until they realize they have different definitions for words. ---Paul Simeon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cosmology is a strange beast. ---Alan A. Coley and George F. R. Ellis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Physical problems have always played an important role in cosmology.... ---Alan A. Coley and George F. R. Ellis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If only I had the theorems! Then I should find the proofs easily enough. ---Bernhard Riemann ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The hardest part of research is always to find a question that's big enough that it's worth answering, but little enough that you actually can answer it. ---Ed Witten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bach selbst ist die Quintessenz aller Musik. ---Pablo Casals ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I happened to be more mathematical than most astronomers, and more astronomer than most mathematicians. ---Georges Lemaître ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tea is where we explain to each other what we don't understand. ---J. Robert Oppenheimer ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If that's the world's smartest man, God help us. ---Richard Feynman's mother, Lucille Feynman, after Omni magazine named him the world's smartest man. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You must understand the galaxies before you can get the geometry right. ---Walter Baade (to Allan Sandage) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I did Bat Out Of Hell thinking it was a comedy record. I did it as a spoof of Springsteen. ---Todd Rundgren ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If I can take a bite out of it, it's real; otherwise, it doesn't exist. ---Ted Nugent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty (i.e. with probability unity) the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of physical reality corresponding to this physical quantity. ---Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You don't become cooler with age, but you do care progressively less about being cool, which is the only true way of being cool. This is called the Geezer's Paradox. ---Widdershins Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand---and melting like a snowflake. ---Francis Bacon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We should have been writing our own songs, but it was much better to listen to ABBA. ---Ritchie Blackmore ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But I did think that the solos went on a little bit too long, to be honest. ---Steve Harris [remembering seeing ELP in the 1970s] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I just have always been repelled by the desperation of bands to get audience participation. ---Ian Anderson