• Karl Popper

    We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.

  • Abbie Hoffman

    You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.

  • Euler

    Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena.

  • Emily Dickinson

    “Heaven” – is what I cannot reach!

    “Heaven” – is what I cannot reach!
    The Apple on the Tree –
    Provided it do hopeless – hang –
    That – “Heaven” is – to Me!

    The Color, on the Cruising Cloud –
    The interdicted Land –
    Behind the Hill – the House behind –
    There – Paradise – is found!

    Her teasing Purples – Afternoons –
    The credulous – decoy –
    Enamored – of the Conjuror –
    That spurned us – Yesterday!

  • David Hume

    Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escap’d shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances.

  • Jerome K Jerome

    Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

  • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

    The People of Spain Think Cervantes

    The people of Spain think Cervantes
    Equal to half-a-dozen Dantes;
    An opinion resented most bitterly
    By the people of Italy.

  • Jorge Luis Borges

    If the pages of this book contain some successful verse, the reader must excuse me the discourtesy of having usurped it first. Our nothingness differs little; it is a trivial and chance circumstance that you should be the reader of these exercises and I their author.

  • Ian Duhig

    From the Irish

    According to Dineen, a Gael unsurpassed
    in lexicographical enterprise, the Irish
    for moon means ‘the white circle in a slice
    of half-boiled potato or turnip’. A star
    is the mark on the forehead of a beast
    and the sun is the bottom of a lake, or well.

    Well, if I say to you your face
    is like a slice of half-boiled turnip,
    your hair is the colour of a lake’s bottom
    and at the centre of each of your eyes
    is the mark of the beast, it is because
    I want to love you properly, according to Dineen.

  • William Morris

    If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

  • Erica Jong

    Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

  • Howard Nemerov

    Because You Asked About the Line
    Between Prose and Poetry

    Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle That while you watched turned into pieces of snow Riding a gradient invisible From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

    There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
    And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

  • Richard Feynman

    From a long view of the history of mankind – seen from, say, ten thousand years from now, there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will pale into provincial insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the same decade.

  • G H Hardy

    There is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

  • Howard Aiken

    Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

  • Marva Collins

    Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide.

  • C S Lewis

    You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

  • Andrew Motion

    To whom it may concern

    This poem about ice cream
    has nothing to do with government
    with riot, with any political scheme

    It is a poem about ice cream. You see ?
    About how you might stroll into a shop
    and ask; One Strawberry Split. One Mivvi.

    What did I tell you ? No one will die.
    No licking tongues will melt like candle wax.
    This is a poem about ice cream. Do not cry.

  • Dr E E Peacock

    One day when I was a junior medical student, a very important Boston surgeon visited the school and delivered a great treatise on a large number of patients who had undergone successful operations for vascular reconstruction. At the end of the lecture, a young student at the back of the room timidly asked, “Do you have any controls?” Well, the great surgeon drew himself up to his full height, hit the desk, and said, “Do you mean did I not operate on half of the patients” The hall grew very quiet then. The voice at the back of the room very hesitantly replied, “Yes, that’s what I had in mind.” Then the visitor’s fist really came down as he thundered, “Of course not. That would have doomed half of them to their death.” God, it was quiet then, and one could scarcely hear the small voice ask, “Which half?”

  • Robert Browning

    Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, ‘A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!’