Basic research is like shooting an arrow into the air and, where it lands, painting a target.
—Homer Burton Adkins
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Anything too stupid to be said is sung.
— Voltaire
Celui qui reçoit une idée de moi reçoit de l'instruction, sans diminuer la mienne; celui qui allume sa bougie à la mienne, reçoit de la lumière sans me plonger dans le noir. Le idées devraient de répandre de l'un à l'autre entre nous tous, à l'ensemble de notre monde, pour [...] l'amélioration de sa condition [...] Les inventions ne peuvent par nature être assujéties à la propriété.
— Thomas Jefferson
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
— Frank Herbert
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
— Christopher Lasch
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
— Ambrose Bierce
Tout ce qui est excessif est insignifiant
— Talleyrand
cujus rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet.
— Pierre de Fermat
Du possible, sinon j'étouffe!
— Sören Kierkegaard
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
— Virgile
Il faut savoir mettre la barre suffisemment haut... pour pouvoir passer dessous sans se baisser.
— Confucius
De ce qui perdure de perte pure à ce qui ne parie que du père au pire
— Jacques Lacan
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
— Albert Einstein
The trouble with America is that there are far too many wide-open spaces surrounded by teeth.
— Charles Luckman
When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half.
— Gracie Allen
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
— Plato
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.
— Laurence J. Peter
I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.
— Joseph Baretti
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
— Douglas Adams
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
— Poul Anderson
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
— Isaac Asimov
He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.
— Unknown
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.
— George Bernard Shaw
Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.
— Blaise Pascal
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
— Bertrand Russell
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
— Sir Winston Churchill
Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.
— Robertson Davies
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
— Edgar Allan Poe
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.
— G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
Il faut rater, s'y remettre et... rater mieux.
— Samuel Beckett
De nouvelles routes bien tracées, pour aller toujours plus loin nulle part.
— Emile Ajar
Poetry is what gets lost in translation
— Robert Frost
I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant
— Alan Greenspan
There is no greater importance in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.
— Norman Mailer
Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
— Sidney J. Harris
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.
— Max Beerbohm
There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
— Alfred Korzybski
You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.
— Sydney Smith
Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead.
— Erma Bombeck
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
— Bill Watterson
Une intuition sans une bonne réalisation, c'est ce qui fait la différence entre un brouillon et une oeuvre
— auteur inconnu (France Inter)
La critique du capitalisme est le résultat des dynamiques idéologiques propres au capitalisme, et non le résultat d'une compréhension se fondant sur quelque référent externe que ce soit
— Slavoj Zizek
To be willing to die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.
— Anatole France
Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
— Thomas A. Edison
Mourir est tout au plus l'antonyme de naître. L'antonyme de vivre reste à trouver
— Chris Marker
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
— Paul Valery
In everything... uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth... Even when building an imperial palace, they always leave one place unfinished.
— Japanese essays in Idleness
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
— Bertrand Russell
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
— Bernard Berenson
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
— Voltaire
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
— Christopher Morley
The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything - or nothing.
— Nancy Astor
Sa logique était une combinaison de demi-vérités et de clichés, sa vision du monde un pot-pourri d'idées fausses tirées d'une histoire de notre pays écrite du point de vue d'un tunnel de métro
— John Kennedy Toole (La conjuration des imbéciles p.178)
[...] dénotait l'absence de théologie et de géométrie du possesseur
— id.
Décidé à ne rencontrer que mes égaux, je ne fréquente évidemment personne puisque je suis sans égal.
— id.
La beauté n'est pas l'objet de la création, elle en est la récompense.
— La subversion des images (beaubourg)
c'est déjà quelquechose, on leur dit : il y a quelque chose à chercher
— Françoise Dolto
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.
— unknown
By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
— Charles Wadsworth
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
— Albert Schweitzer
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
— James Branch Cabell
Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.
— Gerald R. Ford
Do you realize if it weren't for Edison we'd be watching TV by candlelight?
— Al Boliska
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
— William Hazlitt
Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier.
— Blore's Razor
Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.
— Doug Larson
We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
— W. H. Auden
I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.
— George Burns
I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.
— Mitch Hedberg
Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.
— Marcus Brigstocke
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
— Isaac Asimov
La mer est salée parce qu'il y a des morues dedans. Et si elle ne déborde pas, c'est parce que la providence, dans sa sagesse, y a placé aussi des éponges
— Alphonse Allais
Je voudrais vous parler de rien, car c'est un domaine dans lequel j'ai beaucoup de compétences.
— Oscar Wilde
Les progrès de l'humanité se mesurent aux concessions que la folie des sages fait à la sagesse des fous.
— Jean Jaurès
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
— Arthur C. Clarke
Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you--if you don't play, you can't win.
I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.
— Marlene Dietrich
— Robert Heinlein
Voici la morale de l'histoire : qui se laisse fouetter mérite de l'être.
— Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
— Jonas Mekas
The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.
— Benjamin Disraeli
The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
— Dante Gabriel Rossetti
I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.
— Augusten Burroughs
The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.
— J. Frank Dobie
Le drame, chers amis, c'est qu'aujourdhui la betise pense
— Jean Cocteau
I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy.
— Bob Hope
Everything you can imagine is real.
— Pablo Picasso
If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
— Yogi Berra
You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six.
— Yogi Berra
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
— Christopher Morley
C'est peut-être cela la véritable confiance en soi : la capacité à regarder le monde sans avoir besoin d'y trouver des signes susceptibles de flatter son propre égo
— Nassim Nicholas taleb (Le Cygne Noir)
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.
— James F. Byrnes
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
— Richard Feynman
Ce qui m' intéresse, c'est la vie des hommes qui ont échoué car c'est le signe qu'ils ont essayé de se surpasser.
— George Clémenceau
Il faut être absolument moderne
— Arthur Rimbaud
Du classique au quantique // Voudriez-vous me jeter // Le fructose,le glucose // Haut les cœurs V'là la vie
— Murat (Mustang)
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
— Aristotle
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
— Thomas A. Edison
The world's as ugly as sin, and almost as delightful
— Frederick Locker-Lampson
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
— Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)
En s'y conformant, on confirme
— a.w.
Realism...has no more to do with reality than anything else.
— Hob Broun
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--/ I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.
— Robert Frost
Committee, n.:
A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group
decide that nothing can be done.
— Fred Allen
This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
— Douglas Hofstadter
it is written i told you so one the back of that t-shirt —- i told you so
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
— Noam Chomsky
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
— Frank Zappa
When in danger, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
— Robert A. Heinlein
The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert's Symphony #9.
— Erwin Dietrich
Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to plumbing.
— John Cooper Clark.
Some people around here wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit them on the head.
— unkown
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
— Noelie Altito
The first time I see a jogger smiling, I'll consider it.
— Joan Rivers
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
— Samuel Johnson
Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.
— George Burns
I hope that while so many people are out smelling the flowers, someone is taking the time to plant some.
— Herbert Rappaport
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
— Immanuel Kant
Saying what we think gives us a wider conversational range than saying what we know.
— Cullen Hightower
The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.
— Nikola Tesla
Making duplicate copies and computer printouts of things no one wanted even one of in the first place is giving America a new sense of purpose.
— Andy Rooney
Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.
— William Hazlitt
If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
— Juan Ramon Jiminez, the Spanish poet and winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature. (He wrote this, in a metaphor for the questioning and resilient human spirit)
No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather.
— Michael Pritchard
Perhaps the workings of defiance stir
Within me, -or perhaps of cold despair,
Brought on when ills habitually recur, -
Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air,
(For even to this may change of soul refer,
And with light armour we may learn to bear,)
Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not
The chief companion of a calmer lot.
— Lord Byron
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
— H. P. Lovecraft
the best things in life aren't things
— Art Buchwald
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
— Edith Sitwell
The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
— Dorothy Nevill
Physics is that subset of human experience which can be reduced to coupled harmonic oscillators
— Michael Peskin
L'éthique sans l'esthétique, ça ne suffit pas : il faut que ce soit bon et beau à la fois.
— Odon Vallet
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
— William Hazlitt
Richard Hamming's three questions for new hires at Bell Labs :
"1- What are you working on?
2- What's the most important open problem in your area?
3- Why aren't they the same?"
Ayons de bonnes lois, et nous saurons nous passer de religion
— Sade
Pour forger le fer
On a besoin d'un marteau
Et pour avoir un marteau,
il faut le faire;
Et pour cela,
Un autre marteau,
d'autres instruments
son nécessaires
— Spinoza
Larvatus prodeo (J'avance masqué)
— Descartes
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If it's original, you'll have to ram it down their throats
— Howard Alken
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.
— James F. Byrnes
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
— George Bernard Shaw
The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.
— Jilly Cooper
Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.
— Kin Hubbard
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
— Oscar Wilde
Speak when you are angry--and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret.
— Laurence J. Peter
You know that children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.
— John J. Plomp
Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
— Russel Lynes
If you're stuck between two options, just flip a coin. It works, not because it actually solvers the problem, but while the coin is in the air, you'll know what your heart is really helping for.
— unknown
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they’re not.
— Yoggi Berra
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
— George Bernard Shaw
Le laquais, en imitant les vices de ses maitres, il a l'impression de s'approprier leur puissance
— Voltaire
There's no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn't tell you about it?
— Kin Hubbard
L'enfant n'est pas un vase qu'on remplit mais un feu qu'on allume.
— Montaigne
You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.
— Sam Levenson
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.
— Arthur Koestler
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
— Oscar Wilde
Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Il nous invite à faire un pas de coté pour regarder notre modernité de biais
— Charles Pépin
Le beau est le commencement du terrible
— Rainer Maria Rilke
A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
— Victor Hugo
The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.
— Helen Rowland
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
— Baltasar Gracian
Asking the right questions is more important than answering them
— Cantor
Asking the right questions is as important as answering them
— Benoit Mandelbrot
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about."
— Einstein
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
— Soren Kierkegaard
Some men see things as they are and ask why.
Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
— George Bernard Shaw
La confusion est la mère de tous les échecs
— Michel-Antoine Burnier(reref)
Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
— Thomas H. Huxley
Ce que je reproche aux journaux c’est de nous faire faire attention tous les jours à des choses insignifiantes tandis que nous lisons trois ou quatre fois dans notre vie les livres où il y a des choses essentielles.
— Marcel Proust (Du côté de chez Swann)
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
— Thomas Carlyle
To make a great dream come true, the first requirement is a great capacity to dream; the second is persistence.
— Cesar Chavez
Suppose that we think of the integers lined up like dominoes. The inductive step tells us that they are close enough for each domino to knock over the next one, the base case tells us that the first domino falls over, the conclusion is that they all fall over.
The fault in this analogy is that it takes time for each domino to fall and so a domino which is a long way along the line won't fall over for a long time. Mathematical implication is outside time.
— Peter J. Eccles (An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning, p. 41)
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
— Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
— Malcolm Forbes
Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.
— Jim Horning
I wonder if anyone ever measured the time it takes, at a party, before a mildly successful stranger who went to Harvard makes others aware of it
— NN Taleb
In most men love of justice is only fear of suffering injustice
— La Rochefoucauld
A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
— Victor Hugo
L'accident est le portail vers la découverte
— Joyce
...(raconte-moi ton idée) avant qu'elle ne se perde dans l'ozone
— inconnu
Je ne puis accorder à aucune rencontre de ma vie une importance capitale, toute combinaison de circonstances fortuites desuqelles dérive quelque chose de personnellement utile - ou précieux - semblant toujours nécessaire : on est ce qu'on est, de sorte qu'on s'empare nécessairement de ce qui vous est propre dans les circonstances en elles-mêmes indifférentes
— Aldous Huxley (réponse à la question du Minotaure : " Pouvez-vous dire quelle a été la rencontre capitale dans votre vie? Jusqu'à quel point cette rencontre vous a-t-elle donné, vous donne-t-elle l'impression du fortuit? du nécessaire?)
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
— G. K. Chesterton
The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
— Bertrand Russell
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
— Bertrand Russell
Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.
— Peter Borden
My Karma ran over your dogma.
— Unknown
Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It's called 'rain'.
— Michael McClary
I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.
— Marie Curie
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
— Dale Carnegie
A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men.
— Anonymous
Never confuse movement with action.
— Ernest Hemingway
How are you going to teach logic in a world where everybody talks about the sun setting, when it’s really the horizon rising?
— Cal Craig, quoted in Howard Eves, Mathematical Circles Revisited, 1971
the true cost of something is what you give up to get it
— The Economist
The plural of anecdotes is not data
— Ben Goldacre
Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
— Carl Sagan
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
— Albert Einstein
Human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.
— Eric Fromm
It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
— David Brin
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
— Albert Einstein
Notre chaos culturel est dominé par la conviction que parler, c'est penser.
— Jim Harrison
[... la réforme a fait baisser le nombre de gardes à vue et moins de gardes à vue entraîne une baisse des élucidations]
C’est du bon sens n’est-ce pas ? Donc c’est faux, comme 9 fois sur 10 avec le bon sens.
- Maître Eolas
Sitôt que j'eus achevé tout ce cours d'etude [...], je me trouvais embarassé de tant de doutes et d'erreurs, qu'il ne me semblait y avoir fait aaucun profit, en tâchant de m'instruire, sinon que j'avais découvert de plus en plus mon ignorance. Et néanmoins, j'étais en l'une des plus célèbres écoles de l'Europe, où je pensais qu'il devait y avoir de savants hommes.
— Descartes (Discours de la méthode)
Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.
— Isaac Asimov
It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
— G. H. Hardy
Cédant à la réduction trompeuse du raisonnement analogique [...]
— Georges perec (La vie mode 'emploi p.230)
Regarde de tous tes yeux, regarde !
— Jules Verne (Michel Strogoff, via incipit Perec)
Voyageur, le chemin, c'est les traces de tes pas
— Antonio Machado
Some people will never learn anything because they understand everything too soon.
— Alexander Pope
A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.
— Ludwig Erhard
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
— Voltaire
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.
— Joseph Roux
Tactic : ensemble des moyens et des ruses mis en oeuvre pour remonter le temps.
— Alain Finkielkraut
Art is science made clear.
— Jean Cocteau
J'ai toujours suivi une idée qui se termine autrement.
— Baselitz
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
— Bertrand Russell
Jette mon livre ; dis-toi bien que ce n’est là qu’une des mille postures possible en face de la vie. Cherche la tienne. Ce qu’un autre aurait aussi bien fait que toi, ne le fais pas. Ce qu’un autre aurait aussi bien dit que toi, ne le dis pas, aussi bien écrit que toi, ne l’écris pas. Ne t’attache en toi qu’à ce que tu sens qui n’est nulle part ailleurs qu’en toi-même, et crée de toi, impatiemment ou patiemment, ah ! le plus irremplaçable des êtres.
— André Gide
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
— M. Cartmill
Se marier, c'est perdre la moitié de ses droits et doubler ses devoirs.
— Arthur Schopenhauer (in Femmes)
Quand une telle (narcisse) femme est sžre de l'amour d'un homme, elle perd tout intérêt pour lui.
— Bertrand Russell, La conqute du bonheur, p. 19
Notre chaos culturel est dominé par la conviction que parler, c'est penser.
— Jim Harrison
la réforme a fait baisser le nombre de gardes à vue et moins de gardes
à vue entraîné une baisse des élucidations. C'est du bon sens n'est-ce
pas ? Donc c'est faux, comme 9 fois sur 10 avec le bon sens.
—Maître Eolas
Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
— Carl Sagan
The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.
— Anatole France
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
— Henri Poincare
The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
— Edwin Schlossberg
The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light.
— Vicomte de Chateaubriand
I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
— Thomas Jefferson
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
— John Kenneth Galbraith
Le pessimisme de la connaissance n’empêche pas l’optimisme de la volonté.
— Antonio Gramsci
-Concevoir le diable comme un partisan du Mal et l'ange comme un combattant du Bien, c'est accepter la démagogie des anges
-[...] car le grand secret de la vie ne lui était pas inconnu: les femmes ne recherchent pas le bel homme, les femmes recherchent l'homme qui a eu de belles femmes
-Le misogyne ne méprise pas la femme. Le misogyne méprise la féminité
— Milan Kindera (Le livre du rire et de l'oubli)
-Cette nostalgie d'unité, cet appétit d'absolu illustre le mouvement essentiel du drame humain
-Toutes les actions et toutes les grandes pensées ont un commencement dérisoire
-[L'absurde] suppose l'absence totale d'espoir" (mais n'implique pas forcément le désespoir ndlr)
— Albert Camus (Le mythe de Sisyphe)
Le théorème de Birkhoff affirme l'existence de points fixes pour un difféomorphisme de l'anneau S^1\times [-1,1], qui préserve la mesure de Lebesgue, et qui induit un difféomorphisme croissant sur S^1\times {1} et un difféomorphisme décroissant sur S^1\times {-1}.
En réalité, ils portaient davantage sur la préservation du volume.
— wikipedia
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
— Wilson Mizner
Fortune can, for her pleasure, fools advance,
And toss them on the wheels of Chance.
— Juvenal
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
— Oscar Wilde
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
— Paul Gauguin
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
— Isaac Asimov
There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have.
— Don Herold
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.
— Thomas A. Edison
A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.
— Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970), Conquest of Happiness (1930)
L'important, ce n'est pas ce qu'on fait de nous, mais ce que nous faisons nous-même de ce qu'on a fait de nous
Nous ne tenons à nos droits individuels que dans le cadre d'un vaste projet qui tendrait à nous conférer l'existence qu'à partir de la fonction que nous remplissons
— Jean-Paul Sartre (L'être et le néant)
la vie n'est pas trop courte, c'est nous qui la perdons.
— Sénèque
The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
— Paul Fix
I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
— Randall Jarrell
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
— Oscar Levant
People say that what we are seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think this is what we're really seking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive.
— Joseph Campbell (The power of myth)
In the process of searching for a new focus, it is almost inevitable that the "big" questions will creep in. There is pressure from pseudo-philosophers everywhere to cast aside the impertinent and answer the eternal. Two popular examples are "What is the meaning of life?" and "what is the point of it all?".
[...] I am 100% convinced that most big questions we feel compelled to face -handed down through centuries of overthinking and mistranslation- use terms so undefined as to make attempting to answer them a complete waste of time.
Consider the question of questions : What is the meaning of life? If pressed, I have but one response : it is the characteristic state or or condition of a living organism. "But that's just a definition", the questionner will retort, "that's not what I mean at all". What do you mean then? Until the question is clear -each term in it defined- there is no point in answering it.
The "meaning" of "life" question is unanswerable without further elaboration.
— Tim Ferriss
Parmi les gens inaptes à la philosophie, et au nombre desquels il faut compter tous ceux qui n'ont pas étudié la doctrine quantienne - par conséquent, la plupart des étrangers, et, en allemagne, un grand nombre de médecins et d'hommes du même accabit qui philosophes de confiance sur la base de leur catéchisme -, on retrouve encore la vielle opposition radicalement fausse entre l'esprit et la matière. [...] En vérité, il n'y a ni esprit ni matière, mais beaucoup de sottise et d'extravagance dans le monde. L'effort de la pesanteur dans la pierre est tout aussi inexplicable que la pensée dans le cerveau humain, et permettrait donc de conclure à un esprit de la pierre. (p35, ed. Livre de Poche)
— Arthur Schopenhauer (Philosophie et science)
Ce que tu as hérité de tes pères,
Acquiers-le, pour mieux le posséder
— Goethe (via Schopenhauer, phil. & sc., p.156)
[...] et quoique l'argent en lui-même puisse ne pas suffir à rendre les gens importants, il est difficile d'être important sans argent. D'ailleurs, on mesure l'intelligence à l'argnt gagné. Un hommequi gagne baucoup d'argent est un homme intelligent, un homme qui ne le fait pas, ne l'est pas. Personne n'aime à être pris pour un imbécile. C'est pourquoi, lorsque le marché subit des fluctuations, les gens éprouvent ce que les étudiants doivent ressentir à leurs examens. (p.46)
La plupart du temps, le travail que beaucoup de gens ont à faire n'est pas intéressant en soi, mais même ce travail offre de grands avantages. Tout d'abord, il occupe une grande partie de la journée sans que l'on ait bsoin de décider ce que l'on va faire. La plupart des gens, si on les laisse choisir librement l'emploi de leur temps, sont en peine de trouver quoi que ce soit d'assez agréable pour les occuper. Et tout ce qu'ils décident ne les empêchent pas d'être tourmentés par l'idée qu'ils auraient pu fair quelque chose de plus agréable. Le dernier degré de civilisation consiste à pouvoir utiliser intelligemment ses moments de loisir et, à l'heure actuelle, très peu de gens ont atteint ce niveau. (p.191)
[sur l'éducation des jeunes] et en même temps que les fait qui tendent à mettre l'accent sur le rôle insignifiant de l'individu, je leur présenterai un tout autre groupe de faits déstinés à bien leur faire comprendre la grandeur dont l'individu est capable, et je leur montrerais que dans tous les abîmes de l'espace stellaire rien ne nous est connu qui ait autant de valeur. (p.207, ed. Payot)
— Bertrand Russell (La conquête du bonheur)
L'humour a été pour moi, tout le long du chemin, un fraternel compagnonnage; je lui dois mes seuls instants veritables de triomphes sur l'adversité. Personne n'est jamais n'est jamais parvenu à m'arracher cette arme, et je la retourne d'autant plus volontier contre moi-même, qu'à travers le "je" et le "moi", c'est à notre condition profonde que j'en ai.
L'humour est une déclaration de dignité, une affirmation de la supériorité de l'homme sur ce qui lui arrive (p.160, ed. Folio)
Je brûlais un feu rouge et un flic m'arrêta d'un coup de sifflet indigné. -Alors, quoi? gueula-t-il -Rien, lui dis-je en rigolant. La vie est belle ! -Allez, roule, cédant à ce mot de passe, en vrai Français. J'étais jeune, plus jeune que je ne le croyais. Ma naïveté cependant était vieille et désabusée. Eternelle en vérité : je la retrouve dans chaque génération nouvelle, depuis celle des "rats" de Saint-Germain-des-Prés, de 1947, jusqu'à la beat generation californienne qu'il m'arrive de fréquenter parfois, pour m'amuser à reconnaître, en d'autres lieux et sur d'autres visages, les grimaces de mes vingt ans.
— Romain Gary (La promesse de l'aube)
The kindly search for growth, the gracious desire to exist of flowers, my near ecstasy among them
The privilege to witness my existence - you too must seek the sun...
— Allen Ginsberg (transcription of organ music)
You have the possibility to give light a dimension in time. —Jonas Mekas, 1978
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
— Edith Sitwell
Abandon yourself to chance and chaos (gravé au fond d'une chaussure dans une ruelle de strasbourg)
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
— H. L. Mencken
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
— Aldous Huxley
Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
— Bertrand Russell
Do not condemn the judgement of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong.
— Dandemis
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
— Thomas A. Edison
There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.
— Steven Wright
Celui qui trouve sans chercher est celui qui a longtemps cherché. sans trouver. – Gaston Bachelard.
The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
— Horace Walpole
Certi aspettano che il tempo cambi, di altri l'afferrano con forza ed agiscono.
— Dante
To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.
— Nikola Tesla
It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought.
— John Kenneth Galbraith