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Quotes
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"There are some...who think that the number of [grains of] sand is infinite...There are some who, without regarding it as infinite, yet think no number has been named which is great enough...But I will try to show you [numbers that] exceed not only the number of the mass of sand equal to the Earth filled up...but also that of a mass equal in magnitude to the Universe.
- Archimedes
"There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and
from obscurities, that is to say more worthy to express the invariable relation of natural
things...[mathematics] seems to be a faculty of the human mind destined to supplement the shortness
of life and the imperfection of the senses."
- Joseph Fourier
"When you are risen on the eastern horizon
You have filled every land with your beauty...
Though you are far away, your rays are on Earth"
- Akhnaton, Hymn to the Sun
"What a wonderful and amazing scheme have we here of the magnificent
vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, So many Earths...!"
- Christiann Huygens
"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition."
- Carl Sagan
"This new world may be safer, being told
The dangers of diseases of the old."
- John Donne
"They set an ambush for their own lives."
- Proverbs 1:18
"Plainly, nobody will be afraid who believes nothing can happen to him...
Fear is felt by those who believe something is likely to happen to them...
People do not believe this when they are, or think they are, in the midst
of great prosperity, and are in consequence insolent, contemptuous and
reckless...[But if] they are to feel the anguish of uncertainty, there must
be some faint expectation of escape."
- Aristotle
"The first day or so, we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth
day, we were pointing to our countinents. By the fifth day, we were
aware of only Earth."
- Prince Sultan Bin Salmon Al-Saud (Saudi Arabian Astronaut)
"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep
insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense."
- Carl Sagan
"I am not a pessimist. To perceive evil where it exists is, in my
opinion, a form of optimism."
- Roberto Rossellini
"It is only in the moment of time represented by the present
century that one species has aquired the power to alter
the nature of the world."
- Rachel Carson
"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition."
- Carl Sagan
"Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to
formulating
its beliefs in terms of Either-Ors, between which it recognizes no inermediate
possibilities. When forced to recognize that the extremes cannot be acted upon,
it is still inclined to hold that they are all right in theory, but that when it comes to
practical matters circumstances compel us to compromise."
- John Dewey
"To realize in its completeness the universal beauty and perfection of the
works of God, we must recognize a certain perpetual and very free progress
of the while universe...There always remain in the abyss of things slumbering
parts which have yet to be awakened"
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
"Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the
other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is
christianized, it is rich, it is scientific, but...for everything that is gained
something is taken."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Is this, then, true or mere vain fantasy?"
- Euripides
"I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures
or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can
I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical
death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts.
I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and a glimpse of the
marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving
to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests
itself in nature."
- Albert Einstein
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than knowledge: it is those who
know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this
or that problem will never be solved by science."
- Charles Darwin
"Nothing is too wonderful to be true."
- Michael Faraday
"Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth."
- Bertrand Russel
"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good
argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and
you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as
often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it
happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics
or religion."
- Carl Sagan
"Every time a savage tracks his game he employs a minuteness of observation,
and an accuracy of inductive reasoning which, applied to other matters, would
assure some reputation as a man of science...The intellectual labour of a 'good
hunter or warrior' considerably exceeds that of an ordinary Englishmen."
- Thomas H. Huxley
"So we keep asking, over and over,
Until a handful of earth
Stops our mouths -
But is that an answer?"
- Heinrich Heine
"We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder
whether delusion is not more consoling."
- Henri Poincare
"There is nothing which can better deserve out patronage than
the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every
country the surest basis of public happiness."
- George Washington
"Perhaps our descendants will look back on our time and marvel at us - possesed
of the technology to detect other beings, but closing our ears because we insisted
on spending the national wealth to protect us from an enemy that no longer exists."
- Carl Sagan, on the national spending for the Department of defense even after the Cold
War
"We should not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be
educated, but we should believe the philosophers who say that only the
educated are free."
- Epictetus