Words to Live By

Quoting some of the great minds of humanity is quite an effective way of saying something when you yourself have nothing to say. I find it also to be an effective way of getting your mind to begin thinking about things you refuse to look at. Such as life's complexity and mystery. For when we forget that life itself is a difficult and mysterious adventure, we relegate ourselves to the world of Saturday matinees and the lack of self or outward discovery. And when that happens, what fun is it to be alive? It just becomes a sad and predictable routine. Who wants a routine?

So today, wrap your mind around these thoughts from people who were smarter at birth than I can ever hope to be.

For NASA: "Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft and the only one that can be mass-produced with unskilled labor."
--Werner von Braun

"It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man."
--Richard Feynman

"By honest I don't mean that you only tell what's true. But you make clear the entire situation. You make clear all the information that is required for somebody else who is intelligent to make up their mind."
--Richard Feynman

"This I believe:
That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

And this I would fight for:
The freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.

And this I must fight against:
Any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual."
-- John Steinbeck

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
--Albert Einstein

"In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withold provisional assent'. I suppose that apples may start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."
--Stephen Jay Gould

For She Who Battles the Irrational Online Wookie: "Rational argument can be defeated by refusing to argue rationally."
--Steven Weinberg

"You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it."
--Carl Sagan

"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
-- Mark Twain

"When I examined myself and my methods of thought, I came to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge."
-- A. Einstein

"The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best -- and therefore never scrutinize or question."
--Stephen Jay Gould

"The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them."
-- Mark Twain

"If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar."
--Richard Feynman

"Name the greatest of all the inventors. Accident."
--Mark Twain

"If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him."
-- Mark Twain

"Should we be obeying some old piece of paper or should we make our own decisions?"
-- Arthur (the PBS aardvark)

Discuss