Albert Einstein
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.…
Month: November 2004
Arithmetic
Four people are in a room and seven people leave it. How many must go in before the room is empty?…
G K Chesterton
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in one who eats grape-nuts on principle.…
C S Lewis
Angel’s Song I know not, I, What the men together say, How lovers, lovers die And youth passes away. Cannot understand Love that mortal bears To native, native land, All lands are theirs; What at grave they grieve For one voice and face And not, and not receive Another in its place. I above the cone Of the circling night Flying, never have known Less or greater light. Sorrow it is they call This cup whence my lip (Woe’s me!) never in all My endless days can sip.…
Patrick Blackett
May every young scientist remember… and not fail to keep his eyes open for the possibility that an irritating failure of his apparatus to give consistent results may once or twice in a lifetime conceal an important discovery.…
Thomas H. Huxley
The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.…
Scott Adams
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.…
Alfred North Whitehead
“Necessity is the mother of invention” is a silly proverb. “Necessity is the mother of futile dodges” is much nearer the truth.…
C S Lewis
I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.…
Winston Churchill
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.…
Confusion
A centipede was happy quite, Until a frog in fun Said, “Pray which leg comes after which?” This raised her mind to such a pitch, She lay distracted in the ditch, Considering how to run.…
Wernher von Braun
Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing.…
W.C. Sellars and R.J. Yeatman, 1066 and All That
The Norman Conquest was a Good Thing, as from this time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was able to become top nation.…
G K Chesterton
The Donkey When forests walked and fishes flew And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood, Then, surely, I was born. With monstrous head and sickening bray And ears like errant wings – The devil’s walking parody Of all four-footed things: The battered outlaw of the earth Of ancient crooked will; Scourge, beat, deride me – I am dumb – I keep my secret still. Fools! For I also had my hour – One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout around my head And palms about my feet.…
Richard Feynman
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.…
A A Milne
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.…
C of E
The great strength of the Church of England is that it allows its followers to believe almost anything. But of course hardly any of them do…
Albert Einstein
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.…
Winston Churchill
(of Clement Atlee) A modest little man with a lot to be modest about A sheep in sheeps’ clothing. (attributed) An empty taxi arrived at Downing Street, and when the door opened Attlee got out…
Clement Atlee (of himself)
Few thought he was even a starter. There were many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, CH and OM, An earl and a Knight of the Garter…
Malcolm Muggeridge
Animistic savages prostrating themselves before a painted stone have always seemed to me to be nearer the truth than any Einstein or Bertrand Russell.…
Royal Navy Toasts
Sunday …………… Absent friends. Monday ……………Our ships at sea. Tuesday …………..Our men. Wednesday ………Ourselves (as no one else is likely to concern themselves with our welfare). Thursday ………….A bloody war or a sickly season. Friday ………………A willing foe and sea-room. Saturday …………. Sweethearts and wives (may they never meet).…
Stevie Smith
Not Waving but Drowning Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he’s dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.…
Henry Ford
Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.…
Benjamin Franklin
Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and governments.…
Clarence Darrow
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become president; I am beginning to believe it.…
G K Chesterton
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.…
John Ruskin
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.…