Quotes
Miscellaneous
Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel’s immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights, smells and sounds, but with the experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we have believed to be the right and only way.
You have to grow old, but you don’t ever have to grow up.
There are 10 types of people: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
Share your fire with a man, and he’ll be warm for a night. Set that man on fire, though, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life…
If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
If everyone else jumps off a cliff, will you jump too?
Nobody knows what happens after death. No one’s ever come back.
Keep your airspeed up, and your nose below the horizon.
I’m not on anyone’s side but my own, and sometimes I’m not even on my own side…
If there’s an accident in the chemistry building, you’ll be safe if you run a few blocks away. An accident in the physics building, on the other hand, means you should keep running…
A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.
Do not disturb my circles!
You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.
Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women any more than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of one’s living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.
I have no idea. People who boast about their IQ are losers.
Dying boy: ‘What’s it like after you die?’
Stan Marsh: ‘Uh… I’m not sure… I’d think that it’s a lot like it was before you were born?’
Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence.
Don’t fret over trivial fads such as fashion. People who care don’t matter, and people who matter don’t care.
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death
[Thought by Oz when Buffy is briefly telepathic]
I am my thoughts. If they exist in her, Buffy contains everything that is me, and she becomes me, and I cease to exist. Hmm… […] No one else exists either. Buffy is all of us. We think, therefore she is.
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, and die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.
The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.
Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Resentment is like taking poison and then waiting for the other person to die.
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
If you tell the truth, you’ll eventually be found out.
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
I think great advice for the heartbroken is to throw yourself into your work, especially if your job is a river of lava.
There is a legend, that one day will come a species who achieves the impossible. Beings who notice and wisely evade all traps and pitfalls, yet do so while moving forward. A race that soberly studies the art of survival, the craft of maturity, and the science of compassion.
It is said this will be a new dawn. That long-awaited civilization will set forth to rescue all promising new races, teaching them the skills to make it and survive. And they will lift up those who tumbled earlier.
They will light a path for all.
A good man draws a circle around himself and cares for those within; his woman, his children. Other men draw a larger circle and bring within their brothers and sisters. But some men have a greater destiny. They must draw around themselves a circle that includes many, many more. Your father was one of those men. You must decide for yourself whether you are as well.
It seems that your purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And when you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.
The law in its majestic impartiality forbids both rich and poor alike to sleep under the bridges of Paris.
Great minds talk about ideas, small minds talk about people.
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough.
What color is a chameleon on a mirror?
If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.
The world would be a much better place if every single person tried to be just a little tiny bit more tolerant of my bigotry.
Ignorance must certainly be bliss or there wouldn’t be so many people so resolutely pursuing it.
A friend to all is a friend to none.
Why waste time learning when ignorance is instantaneous?
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
I wish I could’ve lived my life backwards.
Anyone smarter than me is a nerd, anyone dumber than me is a moron.
Anyone whose politics are more conservative than mine is a fascist, anyone more liberal is a communist.
Anyone thinner than me is anorexic, anyone fatter than me has no self control.
Anyone who likes mainstream entertainment more than me is a mindless conformist sheep, anyone who likes more obscure entertainment than me is pretentious.
Anyone more generous than me is just trying to make other people feel guilty, anyone less generous than me is a heartless monster.
Anyone who drives faster than me is psychotic, anyone who drives slower than me is incompetent.
Anyone who is older than me is a geezer, anyone younger than me is a kid.
Anyone more religous than me is a nutcase, anyone less religious than me is going to burn in hell.
Anyone more promiscuous than me is a slut, anyone less promiscuous than me is a prude.
Walking on water is nice – but to really bring value you need to freeze it, so other people will be able to follow behind you.
Soldiers hold back the darkness so that scientists and engineers have time to create the light.
The greater fool is actually an economic term. It’s a patsy. For the rest of us to profit, we need a greater fool. Someone who will buy long and sell short. Most people spend their lives trying not to be the greater fool. We toss him the hot potato, we dive for his seat when the music stops. The greater fool is someone with the perfect blend of self-delusion and ego to think that he can succeed where others have failed.
This whole country was made by greater fools.
You know what I like about Will? He’s not absolutely sure about anything. He struggles with things. He’s never certain he’s right, and sometimes he’s not. But he tries hard to be. He struggles with things. … *CRASH* … Could somebody help Will put his pants on?
You must learn all you can, then go back out into the world and give your learning back to the people.
The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.
They called him a silly daydreamer. Tom was a daydreamer, that much was true. But not equally. Those daydreamers who actually get out the door and make their dreams real are the ones who become adventurers.
He knew there were risks in adventure. He thought about them before he began and he took care. But if you want to do difficult, exciting things in life then you have to carefully but regularly test what you are really able to do. You have to learn to think whether a risk is worth taking, or if it is just silly. You need to figure out how to take a risk, so that it doesn’t hurt you. And you need to be brave, trying out things that you previously felt might be too hard. If you do these things often, you’ll start to understand that you are capable of more than you ever imagined. You really are.
What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
I could never understand ethnic or national pride. Because to me pride should be reserved for something you achieve or attain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth. Being Irish isn’t a skill, it’s a fuckin’ genetic accident. You wouldn’t say ‘I’m proud to be 5’11”. I’m proud to have a predisposition for colon cancer.’ So why the fuck would you be proud to be Irish, or proud to be Italian, or American or anything?
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.
Successful people are not gifted; they just work hard, then succeed on purpose.
Oma: I can fight you.
Anubis: Well, you can’t win.
Oma: It won’t matter, you won’t be able to do anything but fight me back.
Anubis: What are you going to do?
Oma: Something I should have done a long time ago.
Watching these channels all day is incredibly depressing. I live in a constant state of depression. I think of us as turd miners. I put on my helmet, I go and mine turds, hopefully I don’t get turd lung disease.
Philosophy
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
The wise are driven by reason; ordinary minds, by experience; the stupid, by necessity, and brutes by instinct.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, ‘This is old, and therefore good.’ And one says ‘This is new, and therefore better.’
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgement and action.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present themselves to us.
There’s nothing to be gained by second guessing yourself. You can’t remake the past, so look ahead… or risk being left behind.
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. This is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of, else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. … So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.
Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.
You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again. The never-satisfied man is so strange; if he has completed a structure, then it is not in order to dwell in it peacefully, but in order to begin another. I imagine the world conqueror must feel thus, who, after one kingdom is scarcely conquered, stretches out his arms for others.
Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons as they were in fact used dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Krishna is trying to persuade Arjun that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, ’Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.
Enlightened self-interest over sufficiently long time spans is indistinguishable from altruism.
We need an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally acceptable to those with faith and those without.
It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.
It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.
Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.
Politics
But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
The Constitution preserves ‘the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . . (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.’
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.
The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference– they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.
That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms…
… we must not fail to comprehend [a strong military’s] grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.
The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They’re the kind of people who’d stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn’t bother to stop because they’d want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.
Anyone that wants the presidency so much that he’ll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing… after they have exhausted all other possibilities.
Naturally the common people don’t want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country that determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice,the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of Patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism.
For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they will not do for themselves.
Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of free speech, then you’re in favour of freedom of speech for precisely for views you despise. Otherwise, you’re not in favour of free speech.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
Science
That’s not right. It’s not even wrong.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Corollary: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.)
The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist. However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.
Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘old one’. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.
How many inches are in a foot? How many feet in a mile? Okay– without a calculator– how many inches are in a mile?
Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.
In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key.
We have designed our civilization based on science and technology and at the same time arranged things so that almost no one understands anything at all about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster.
It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas … If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you … On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.
Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.
Imagine we could accelerate continuously at 1 g — what we’re comfortable with on good old terra firma — to the midpoint of our voyage, and decelerate continuously at 1 g until we arrive at our destination. It would take a day to get to Mars, a week and a half to Pluto, a year to the Oort Cloud, and a few years to the nearest stars.
The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgement to have safely traveled from star to star.
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.
A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.
A scientific colleague tells me about a recent trip to the New Guinea highlands where she visited a stone age culture hardly contacted by Western civilization. They were ignorant of wristwatches, soft drinks, and frozen food. But they knew about Apollo 11. They knew that humans had walked on the Moon. They knew the names of Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins. They wanted to know who was visiting the Moon these days.
Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth.
There are problems to whose solution I would attach an infinitely greater importance than to those of mathematics, for example touching ethics, or our relation to God, or concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies wholly beyond us and completely outside the province of science.
I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible.
If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
It has often and confidently been asserted, that man’s origin can never be known: Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
There is good evidence that the art of shooting with bows and arrows has not been handed down from any common progenitor of mankind, yet as Westropp and Nilsson have remarked, the stone arrow-heads, brought from the most distant parts of the world, and manufactured at the most remote periods, are almost identical; and this fact can only be accounted for by the various races having similar inventive or mental powers.
There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry … There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.
What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn’t prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.
I had no need of that hypothesis. [When asked by Napoleon why he didn’t mention God in his research.]
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.
[Often quoted as Einstein’s Razor: ‘Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.’]
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?
May I have the ability to reduce the uncertainties I can, the willingness to work with the uncertainties I cannot, and the scientific knowledge to know the difference.
Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.
What happens in Cygnus X-1 stays in Cygnus X-1.
We have not answered every question you have. Each answer led to more questions. But perhaps now we are confused at a more sophisticated level, and about more important things.
About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!
