“Every honest researcher I know admits he’s just a professional amateur. He’s doing whatever he’s doing for the first time. That makes him an amateur. He has enough sense to know that he’s going to have a lot of trouble, so that makes him a professional.” — Charles F. Kettering
“Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.” — Goethe
From English antiquary John Aubrey’s 1696 Miscellanies: “Anno 1670, not far from Cyrencester, was an Apparition; Being demanded, whether a good Spirit or a bad? Returned no answer, but departed with a curious Perfume and a most melodious Twang.”
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” — Galileo
In the 2004 film Shark Tale, the shark Lenny coughs up several items onto a table. Among them is a Louisiana license plate, number 007 0 981. The same plate is retrieved from sharks in both Jaws and Deep Blue Sea.
“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” — Adam Smith
“I love criticism just so long as it’s unqualified praise.” — Noël Coward
“I always turn to the sports section first. The sports section records people’s accomplishments; the front page nothing but man’s failures.” — Earl Warren
“Personalize your sympathies; depersonalize your antipathies.” — W.R. Inge
“What I cannot create, I do not understand.” — On Richard Feynman’s Caltech blackboard at the time of his death in 1988
