Look up the “Best Things Ever Said” series by Robert Byrne.
“I believe that in about one hundred years’ time, it will be possible to programme a computer with a storage capacity of 10^9” - Alan Turing.
“Turing believes machines will think. Turing lies with men. Therefore machines will not think” - Alan Turing.
“Mathematicians are like French men. Whatever you say to them, they translate it into their own language and forthwith it means something completely different” - van Goethe.
“Do not worry about your problems in mathematics, I can assure you that mine are far greater” - Albert Einstein.
“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim” - Edsger Dijkstra.
“Computer science is no more about computers then astronomy is about telescopes” - Edsger Dijkstra.
“We must know, we will know” - David Hilbert.
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go - Hamlet
Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won - Wellington
Wise people learn when they can; fools learn when they must - Wellington
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely - Lord Acton
Everything in moderation, including moderation - Harvey Steiman
Tolkien; or Bilbo Baggins, if you prefer.
“The race is not always to the swift nor the fight to the strong- but that’s the way to bet.” - Damon Runyan
Some good ones from G.K. Chesterton:
“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
“Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.”
“I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.”
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.”
“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.”
“By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.”
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”
~~Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
Shego: Y’know, for someone who’s supposedly a mad genius, I’m not seeing much of the “genius.”
Drakken: Keep it up, Shego, and you’ll see plenty of the “mad.”
Shego: Oooooh, scary man.
Take a right at the light, keep going straight until night, and then boys you’re on your own.
~~Bruce Springsteen, Blinded By The Light
“Today’s pig is tomorrow’s bacon.” -Hunter S. Thompson
"I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger…a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident."
~~Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Chico: “The garbage man is here.”
Groucho: “Well, tell him we don’t want any.”
The Magus: How did you know the road here?
Conan the Barbarian: I followed the vultures; they always lead me to my goal.
The Magus: They should; you have fed them full often enough. What of the guard who watched the cleft?
Conan, grinning: Dead, he wouldn’t listen to reason.
The Magus: The vultures follow you, not you the vultures!
Hot damn, it is Halloween again, and I am ready to get Weird in public. Never mind Anthrax for today. The Yankees won, but so what? That’s what I said to the fruitbag who claimed to be Sean Penn when he called earlier…He was drunk, so I knew right away that it wasn’t Sean Penn. “Get out of my face!” I screamed at him. “You are the same squalid freak who called here a few days ago and said he was Muhammad Ali!”~~HST
“You’ve got a reason, but you didn’t tell me. The only time you don’t tell me is when you think it’s dangerous. Because, being a fragile, sheltered noblewoman, I might faint at the thought of experiencing physical harm like a common person. And then I have to damage one of the good pans, by smacking it against your thick, common skull—until you tell me.”~~Countess Marie Payne of the Circus Of Adventure
Ron Stoppable: Have we been in this secret lair before?
Kim Possible: They all start to look alike after a while, don’t they?
It is ridiculous claiming that video games and the internet influence children. For instance, if Pac-man affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms and eat pills while listening to monotonous electronic music. ~~Unknown
Childhood ends when you find out there are no monsters in your closet…and that they are really walking the streets. ~~Mike Hutchison
“You’ve got anger issues, Red Robot. Gold-foil, diamond-etched, creme-filled, limited-edition, collector’s item number one anger issues.”~~Clango the Robot
“The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.”~~Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
We’re the Rescue Rangers, a small, but efficient, battalion of do-gooders devoted to helping those in trouble. Would you like to see our news clippings?~~Gadget Hackwrench
Alone in the hissing laboratory of his wishes, Mr Pugh minces among bad vats and jeroboams, spinneys of murdering herbs, and prepares to compound for Mrs Pugh a venomous porridge hitherto unknown to toxicologists which will scald and viper through her 'til her ears fall off like figs, her toes grow big and black as balloons, and steam comes screaming out of her navel.~~Zappa
“You have been tried by twelve good men and true, not of your peers but as high above you as heaven is of hell, and they have said you are guilty. Time will pass and seasons will come and go. Spring with its wavin’ green grass and heaps of sweet-smellin’ flowers on every hill and in every dale. Then sultry Summer, with her shimmerin’ heat-waves on the baked horizon. And Fall, with her yeller harvest moon and the hills growin’ brown and golden under a sinkin’ sun. And finally Winter, with its bitin’, whinin’ wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow. But you won’t be here to see any of ‘em; not by a damn sight, because it’s the order of this court that you be took to the nearest tree and hanged by the neck til you’re dead, dead, dead, you olive-colored son of a billy goat.”
I never look back, dahling.
It distracts from the Now.
~~**Edna Mode**, Fashion Designer
**Jet: So how is she, what's Julia like?**
*Faye: Ordinary. The beautiful, dangerous kind of ordinary you just can't leave alone.*
**Jet: I see.**
*Faye: Like an angel from the underworld...or maybe a devil from paradise.*
*"Isn't this great? For the next 72 hours we're going to live off what nature sent our way! See that stream? That's our drinking water! See those berries? That's our breakfast!"*~~ Jake Morgendorffer
**"See that skeleton? That's our future."** ~~Daria Morgendorffer
The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason. ~~**Hunter S. Thompson**
"See? He's avake und talking--und no more schtupid den he vos before!"~~**Ognian The Jagermonster**
**Dr Possible, PhD**: *Honey, you know how I feel about 'show people'.*
**Dr.Possible, MD**: They're just like you and me. Except they're wealthy, beautiful and live by no recognizable moral code!
~~Kim's Parents Opine On Hollywood, from *Kim Possible*
And...
"FRIENDS! ROMULANS! COUNTRY BUMPKINS! Lend me your auditory canal openings! Ask not what your fellow clones can do for you, but what you can do for country music! This is a day that will live with the infantry! Once more onto the beach. And let's sic our dogs on the poor! Never in the field of Drone conflict was so much owned by so many who only had a few!"~~**Planck**, Alien Grey Rabble-Rouser.School is teachers who don’t know, teaching facts that aren’t true, to kids who don’t care.
Matt Groening in School is Hell
KLEIN BOTTLE FOR RENT: inquire within
Some of my favourite Ambrose Bierce bits:
“Quotation: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.”
“Education: That which discloses the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.”
“To be positive: To be mistaken at the top of one’s voice.”
“In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.”
“When you are ill make haste to forgive your enemies, for you may recover.”
“Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.”
“Violence is the last resort of the incompetent.” --Isaac Asimov
“…because only the incompetent will use it as a last resort.” --H. Beam Piper
“The name of the game is be hit and hit back.” –Warren Zevon
"Freedom of speech is freedom of death. –Chuck D
“We long to be praised for the beauties we don’t have.”
“Like all true eccentrics, he found other people very odd.”
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes them to live.” –Ruth Rendell
“If there’s any illness for which people offer many remedies, you may be sure that particular illness is incurable, I think.” - Chekhov, “The Cherry Orchard”, Act One
“I’m of the planet of the carrot. Why would I eat my relatives?” - Ward Churchill, “The Weekly Standard”, 4/25/05
“One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” - George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism”
“Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence.” C.S. Lewis, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”
“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.” G.K. Chesterton, “The Napoleon of Notting Hill”
“The telephone is a wonderful invention. I foresee the day when every city will have one.” Mayor of Philadelphia (attr.)
“We would not say anything if the U.S.A. were aware of its intellectual and moral defects and was trying to grow up. But it is too much when it behaves in an impudent manner toward a part of the earth with a few thousands years of glorious history behind it, attempting to teach it moral and intellectual lessons, whether out of innocence or a complete lack of genuine culture and learning. We can forgive the mistakes of youth, but this degree of arrogance gets on one’s nerves.” - Joseph Goebbels, 1943
Here’s the quote fetus referred to. I forget who first posted it on the SDMB.
“If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything.” - Fred Menger, chemistry professor (1937- )
“We must laugh before we are happy for fear of dying without laughing at all.”
Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696)
“To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.”
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
“Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.”
(Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918) {Defining philosophy}
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not the absence of fear.”
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
“What is mind? No matter.
What is matter? Never mind.”
Thomas Hewitt Key (1799-1875)
“Associate with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation.”
George Washington (1732-1799)
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away
Let them work out what it means.
So we’re doing The Boss now …
“Faith is essential, but so is doubt.” -Bruce Springsteen
I recall hearing him say this on the Charlie Rose show. According to the Charlie Rose Show web site, that would have been 11/20/98 or 12/28/98.
which goes well with:
“Dubium sapientiae initium.” (Doubt is the origin of wisdom.) -Rene Descartes, along with his better known “Cogito, ergo sum.” (I think, therefore I am).
My favorite Springsteen quote is from his song The River:
“Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true -
or is it something worse?”
Not exactly inspirational for students, but in my experience too, too true.
More amusing, from a friend of a friend:
“The two biggest problems in America are making ends meet and making
meetings end.” -Joyce Reppert
"Perfection is impossible, but excellence is achievable and necessary … "
- Guy Helmer, Ph.D.
“Intellect distinguishes between the possible and the impossible; reason distinguishes between the sensible and the senseless. Even the possible can be senseless.” - Max Born
“Zeno says he’s willing to meet you halfway.”
[QUOTE=Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor"FRIENDS! ROMULANS! COUNTRY BUMPKINS! Lend me your auditory canal openings! Ask not what your fellow clones can do for you, but what you can do for country music! This is a day that will live with the infantry! Once more onto the beach. And let’s sic our dogs on the poor! Never in the field of Drone conflict was so much owned by so many who only had a few!"~~Planck, Alien Grey Rabble-Rouser.[/QUOTE]
(But they’ll never take our Fritos!)
Two of my favourite quotes:
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but 'That’s funny…’ - Isaac Asimov
If there is such a thing as absolute evil, it lies in treating another human being as a thing. - John Brunner
Another good site for quotations is The Calligraphic Button Catalog. You can search for all sorts of topics, and there are quite a few math ones in there.*
*Note affiliated with the site or the site’s owner. Very satisfied customer in the past.
That should read:
Note: NOT affiliated with the site . . .
sigh I even previewed. I did.