Selected Quotes

"An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field. "

"The Puritan ethic is the constant fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time. "

"Be excellent to each other, and party on! "

"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth. [Often paraphrased as "Science progresses one funeral at a time".] "

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong. "

"When the president does it … that means that it is not illegal "

"...In addition to these changes, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and Chief Executive Officer Stan Deal will retire from the company and Stephanie Pope will lead our BCA business, effective today. I want to thank Stan for his many contributions and dedication since first joining our ranks 38 years ago, and for his tireless service as our BCA leader during an uncommonly difficult period for our company and for our industry. "

"When I played Keokuk one night they were so packed in they couldn't laugh ha ha ha, they had to laugh ho, ho ho "

"Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.   "

"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life. "

"Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down. "

"I reject your reality and substitute my own "

"If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else. "

"You, Colm, you know what you used to be? No Pádraic what did I used to be? Nice! You used to be nice! And now, do you know what you are? Not nice.  I suppose niceness doesn't last then does it Pádraic. But I'll tell you something that does last.  What? And don't say something stupid lIke music. Music lasts. I knew it! And paintings last. And poetry lasts.  So does niceness. Do you know who they'll remember for how nice he was in the seventeenth century?  Who? Absolutely no one. Yet we all remember the music of the time. Everyone to a man knows Mozart's name. Well I don't so there goes that theory. "

"I do feel sometimes I'm just entertaining myself while staving off the inevitable. Don't you? No. Sure you do. "

"Call me Ishmael. "

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. "

"I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans, but I have never seen anything as terrifying as Moby Dick. "

"There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men. "

"It is not down on any map; true places never are. "

"Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. "

"From hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee. "

"I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing. "

"There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. "

"Any man who has gone farther and fared worse than ever, may console himself with the thought that it could be the albatross or the flying Dutchman. "