User:Aritalab/Masanori Arita/Quotations

Revision as of 17:04, 2 May 2011

Science

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

Ernest Rutherford, in J. B. Birks "Rutherford at Manchester" (1962)

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

Alfred North Whitehead

In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

Johann von Neumann

In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known.

Thomas Pickering

Estimated amount of glucose used by an adult human brain each day, expressed in M&Ms: 250

Harper's Index, October 1989

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls

Matt Cartmill (Professor in Biological Anthropology)

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.

Evan Esar (Esar's Comic Dictionary)

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager."

William S. Burroughs

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

Paul Dirac

In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known.

Thomas Pickering

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

Richard Feynman

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

Richard Feynman

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.

Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld magazine

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

Nikola Tesla, Modern Mechanics and Inventions, July, 1934

Life

金を残す人生は下、事業を残す人生は中、人を残す人生こそが上なり

後藤新平 （満鉄、帝都復興院総裁）

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.

John Updike, Assorted Prose (1965)

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists"

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Sir Francis Bacon

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.

Rita Mae Brown

We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.

W. H. Auden

The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

Arthur C. Clarke

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

Bill Gates, Time Magazine, January 13, 1996

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion, 1926

The point of living and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.

Peter Ustinov

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Jack London

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor, Guardian Unlimited (UK) August 9, 2004

This book fills a much-needed gap.

Moses Hadas

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

Oscar Wilde, The Model Millionaire, 1912

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.

Neil Gaiman, Sandman

Society

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

Eugene McCarthy, Time magazine, Feb. 12, 1979

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

Daniel J. Boorstin

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

George Orwell

But in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Jean Baptiste Le Roy (1789)

But what is the difference between literature and journalism? ...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.

Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, 1891

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.

Aneurin Bevan

Sports

There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

Steven Wright

My toughest fight was with my first wife.

Muhammad Ali

Golf and sex are about the only things you can enjoy without being good at.

Jimmy Demaret

Comedy

It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.'

Sam Levenson

After twelve years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes. He said, 'No hablo ingles.'

Ronnie Shakes

Presidents

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

Sir Winston Churchill

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim".

Lyndon B. Johnson