Thoughtful quotes

Here is a collection of quotes that have caught my attention, and resonated with me (or had me laughing out loud), grouped in a number of categories.

Science and Education

"Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going."

Michael Shermer

"Life is complex: it has real and imaginary parts"

Anonymous

“Optimism indicates that the situation has not been clearly understood.”

Anonymous

“Phd dissertations are for people who can't write books.”

Anonymous

“My job is to draw little points on little graphs and to derive little information.”

Anonymous

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”

Daniel J. Boorstin

“Science doesn't care what you believe in.”

Anonymous

“Science is the poetry of reality.”

Anonymous

"It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious"

Stephen Hawking

"I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street."

Stephen Hawking

“The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

Arthur Eddington, New Pathways in Science

"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."

Neil deGrasse Tyson

"But if anybody says he can think about quantum problems without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about it"

Niels Bohr

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

Theodosius Dobzhansky

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

Albert Einstein

Humorous

“You're only seventeen, you're too young to have a meatloaf recipe... go get something pierced.”

Roseanne Barr

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”

Groucho Marx

“Such is life, and it gets sucher every day.”

Anonymous

“Only the mediocre are always at their best.”

Anonymous

“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”

Mark Twain

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”

Garrison Keillor

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”

Robert A. Heinlein

"I'm Dutch. I'm not arguing. I'm explaining why I'm right."

Anonymous

Wisdom

“Poetry: Language against which we have no defences.”

David Whyte

“If folks were meant to be rude they would be born that way.”

Anonymous

“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.”

Olin Miller

"Old trees are our parents, and our parent's parents, perchance. If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity..."

Richard Powers, The Overstory

“What if there was no such thing as a hypothetical question?”

Anonymous

Religion

“Virtuous behaviour by a believer is no proof at all of - indeed is not even an argument for - the truth of his belief.”

Christopher Hitchens

" The theory that religion is a force for peace, often heard among religious right and its allies today, does not fit the facts of history."

Steven Pinker

"No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science."

Robert Green Ingersoll

"For we often talked of my daughter, who died of the fever this fall. And I thought 'twere the will of the Lord, but Miss Annie she said it was drains"

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“God is the name given by theologians to something they know nothing about. There is no God; the whole existence is made of the stuff called love.”

Osho