Month: November 2004

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Four people are in a room and seven people leave it. How many must go in before the room is empty?

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in one who eats grape-nuts on principle.

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.

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.

The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

“Necessity is the mother of invention” is a silly proverb. “Necessity is the mother of futile dodges” is much nearer the truth.

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.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

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.

Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing.

The Norman Conquest was a Good Thing, as from this time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was able to become top nation.

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.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

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

To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.

(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

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

Animistic savages prostrating themselves before a painted stone have always seemed to me to be nearer the truth than any Einstein or Bertrand Russell.

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).

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.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and governments.

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become president; I am beginning to believe it.

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

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.