“To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities.” — Samuel Johnson
“Thou canst not joke an Enemy into a Friend; but thou may’st a Friend into an Enemy.” — Ben Franklin
“One can pay back the loan of gold, but one lies forever in debt to those who are kind.” — Marcus Aurelius
“As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.” — Benjamin Disraeli
“Climate is your personality; weather is your mood.” — J. Marshall Shepherd, past president, American Meteorological Society, quoted in Andrew Revkin and Lisa Mechaley, Weather: An Illustrated History, 2018
Written by Albert Einstein at the invitation of a German magazine, 1921:
What Artistic and Scientific Experience Have in Common
Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, we are engaged in science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaningful, then we are engaged in art. Common to both is the loving devotion to that which transcends personal concerns and volition.
(From Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, eds., Albert Einstein, the Human Side: New Glimpses From His Archives, 1979.)
“Suppose a contradiction were to be found in the axioms of set theory. Do you seriously believe that that bridge would fall down?” — Frank Ramsey, to Wittgenstein
“Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether, say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane.” — Richard W. Hamming
“The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.” — Montaigne
English proverbs:
And “Whosoever draws his sword against the prince must throw the scabbard away.”
Roald Dahl wrote the film adaptations for two of Ian Fleming’s novels, You Only Live Twice and Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.
(Thanks, Ben and Fred.)
“Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.” — Robert King Merton
