Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean I’d love to be skinny like that but not with all those flies and death and stuff.
- – Mariah Carey

Alle lykkelige familier ligner hverandre. Alle ulykkelige familier er ulykkelige på sin egen måte.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Det fascinerende hvordan skjønnet alltid oppfattes som synonymt med godhet.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Experimental science … only deals with positive knowledge and reveals the greatness of the human intellect when it does not introduce the question of ultimate causes into inquiries. Abstract sicience, on the other hand, only becomes a sience and only reveals the greatness of the human intellect when it completely avoids questions conserning the sequence of causative phenomena and examines man only in relation to an ultimate cause.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Jeg ville ikke engang vite sannheten, fordi jeg allerede hadde gjettet den; livet er meningsløst.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

I mye visdom er det mye sorg. Å øke ens kunnskap betyr å øke ens sorg.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Skal et menneske kunne leve et meningsfyllt liv, må han enten være uvitende om det uendelige, eller så må han ha en eller annen forklaring på meningen med livet, slik at det endelige bringes i overenstemmelse med det uendelige.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Essensen av enhver religion ligger helt og holdent i svaret på spørsmålet; hvorfor eksisterer jeg, og hva er mitt forhold til det uendlige univers som omgir meg?.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Antisemittisme er en patologisk tilstand, en besynderlig form for seksuell perversjon. Blant alle skjendige fenomener er den det ekleste og mest avskyelige.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Føreren er bølgen som driver skipet fremover.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Historie er bare en samling mynter og unyttige bagateller, pyntet med en menge unyttige skikkelser og merkelige navn.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Når jeg engang står med det ene ben i kisten, vil jeg si sannheten om kvinnen, skynde meg å trekke det andre benet etter og lukke lokket.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

En mann vil ofre sin familie for en idé, en kvinne aldri.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Musikk er følelsens stenografi.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Without knowing why I am and why I am here, life is impossible.
- – Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

He who seizes the right moment, is the right man.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Man blir mildere med årene: Jeg ser ingen som gjør noen feil som jeg ikke selv kunne ha begått.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Hva er barbari annet enn at man ikke anerkjenner det fortreffelige.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Stjerner begjærer man ikke, man gleder seg over deres prakt.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Det er bare de som føler seg underlegne som er beskjedne – de dyktige fryder seg over det de har utført.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Visdom finnes kun i sannheten.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Reis ikke for å komme frem, men for å reise.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Minst en gang om dagen bør vi høre en liten sang, lese et godt dikt, se et vakkert bilde, og – om mulig – si et par fornuftige ord.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Det virker som om noen bøker er skrevet, ikke for at man skal lære noe av dem, men for at man skal få greie på at forfatterene har visst noe.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Erfaring er nesten alltid en parodi på ideén.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Impotent hat er den fyrkteligste av alle følelser; man skal ikke hate noen som man ikke kan ødelegge.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Man må kunne overskue 6000 års historie for å forstå øyeblikket..
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Hypoteser er vuggesanger som læreren dysser sine elever i søvn med.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Håpet er den ulykkeliges annen sjel.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sammen med kunnskaper, vokser tvilen.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Det er mange mennesker som innbiller seg, at det de har opplevd, forstår de også.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Alle intelligente tanker er allerede tenkt, det er bare nødvendig at noen tenker dem om igjen.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Intelligente mennesker er aldri så skarpsindige som når de har urett.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Jeg kan love å være oppriktig, men ikke å være upartisk.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Et menneske feiler så lenge det vil noe.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Moderne poeter blander meget vann i blekket.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Når to mennesker er tilfreds med hverandre, kan en gå ut fra at begge tar feil.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ironi er det lille saltkornet som gjør det som serveres spiselig.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

En lurvet kamel bærer mange eslers byrder.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Kreditt er en, gjennom ytelser, fremkalt idé om pålitelighet .
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Egentlig vet man bare noe når man vet litt: tvilen vokser med kunnskap.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Mange er stolte over det de vet, men overlegne over det de ikke vet.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Litteratur forderver bare i den utstrekning menneskene blir mer fordervede.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Matematikerene er som franskmenn. Snakker man til dem, oversetter de det til sitt eget språk, og så er det strakt noe helt annet.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Den lykkligste man, er han som ser starten og slutten på ens eget liv i sammenheng.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Jeg kaller arkitektur frossen musikk.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Vi er slaver av tingene rundt oss.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

En stor revolusjon, er aldri til folkets fortjeneste, men regjeringens.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Overtro er livets poesi; derfor skader det ikke dikteren å være overtroisk.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Samvittighet har bare dem som betrakter, den som handler er samvittighetsløs.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Hvis du forlanger et klokt svar, må du også spørre fornuftig.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Du har tatt det første skrittet mot visdom, når du har lært å holde munn.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Et bortkastet liv, er en tidlig død.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Det som ikke dreper meg, gjør meg sterkere.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Only learn to seize good fortune, for good fortune is always here.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Once you have missed the first buttonhole you’ll never manage to button up.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The thinker makes a great mistake when he asks after cause and effect. They both together make up the indivisible phenomena.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To be pleased with one’s limits is a wretched state.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are never deceived: we deceive ourselves.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Our senses don’t decieve us: our judgement does.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Mastery is often taken for egotism.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Everything great and intelligent is in the minority.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What we don’t understand we don’t possess.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When you praise someone you call yourself his equal.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The solution of every problem is another problem.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

After fifteen minutes nobody looks at a rainbow.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you imagine.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing hurts a new truth more than an old error.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Everyone hears only what he understands.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You don’t have to travel around the world to understand that the sky is blue everywhere.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He who moves not forward, goes backward.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Confronted by outstanding merit, there is no way of saving one’s ego except by love.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I can promise to be sincere, but not to be impartial.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nature has neither kernel nor shell; she is everything at once.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A vain man can never be utterly ruthless: he wants to win applause and therefore he accommodates himself to others.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If you would create something, you must be something.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What is important of life is life, and not the result of life.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ingenting viser en manns karakter bedre enn det han ler av.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The best fortune that can fall to a man is that which corrects his defects and makes up for his failings.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
- – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
- – Albert Einstein

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing. If I had my life to live over again, I’d be a plumber
- – Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
- – Albert Einstein

Never express yourself more clearly than you think.
- – Niels Bohr

When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
- – Martin Luther King jr

In science, one can learn the most by studying what seems the least.
- – Marvin Minsky

You cannot think about thinking, without thinking about something.
- – Seymour Papert

In the nature of the mind that makes individual kin, and the differences in the shape, form, or manner of the material atoms out of whose intricate relationships that mind is built are altogether trivial.
- – Isaac Asimov

And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.
- – T S Elliot

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts.
- – Sherlock Holmes

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
- – Vannevar Bush

When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion–the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.
- – Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)

We are all here on earth to help others. What I can’t figure out is what the others are here for.
- – W Hauden

Fredkins Paradox: The more equally attractive two alternatives seem, the harder it can be to choose between them – no matter that, to the same degree, the choice can only matter less.
- – Edward Fredkin

One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
- – J. D. Watson

Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature.
- – Michael Faraday

MIND. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.
- – Ambrose Bierce

The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we’ve connected it to all the other things we know. That’s why it’s almost always wrong to seek the “real meaning” of anything. A thing with just one meaning has scarcely any meaning at all.
- – Marvin Minsky

The smaller two languages are, the harder it will be to translate between them. This is not because there are too many meanings, but because there are too few. The fewer things an agent does, the less likely that what another agent does will correspond to any of those things. And if two agents have nothing in common, no translation is conceivable.
- – Marvin Minsky

Our minds contain processes that enable us to solve problems we consider difficult. “Intelligence” is our name for whichever of those processes we don’t yet understand.
- – Marvin Minsky

To be considered an “expert”, one needs a large amount of knowledge of only a relatively few varieties. In contrast, an ordinary person’s “common sense” involves a much larger variety of different types of knowledge – and this requires more complicated management systems.
- – Marvin Minsky

Puzzle Principle: We can program a computer to solve any problem by trial and error, without knowing how to solve it in advance, provided only that we can have a way to recognize when the problem is solved.
- – Marvin Minsky

The experiences we find hardest to recollect are often just the kinds we find the hardest to describe.
- – Marvin Minsky

Do not become attached to the things you like, do not maintain aversion to the things you dislike. Sorrow, fear and bondage come from one’s likes and dislikes.
- – BUDDHA

Papert’s Principle: Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows.
- – Seymour Papert

This difficulty (of making definitions) is increased by the necessity of explaining the words in the same language, for there is often only one word for one idea; and though it may be easy to translate words like bright, sweet, salt, bitter, into another language, it is not easy to explain them.
- – Samuel Johnson

How many times in the course of life had I been disappointed by reality because, at the time I was observing it, my imagination, the only organ with which I could enjoy beauty, was not able to function, by virtue of the inexorable law which decrees that only that which is absent can be imagined.
- – Marcel Proust

An expert is one who does not have to think. He knows.
- – Frank Lloyd Wright

To him that has, more shall be given; but from him that has not, the little that he has shall be taken away.
- – St Matthew

Since emotions are few and reasons are many (said the robot, Giskard), the behaviour of a crowd can be more easily predicted than the behaviour of one person can.
- – Isaac Asimov

The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to it’s original size.
- – Oliver Wendell Holmes

If I’d had more time, I’d written a shorter book.
- – Mark Twain

… no one has ever found a test to prove what’s justified or true.
- – Marvin Minsky

We turn to quantitites when we can’t compare the qualities of things.
- – Marvin Minsky

We always yearn for certainty, but the only thing beyond dispute is that there’s always room for doubt. And doubt is not an enemy that sets constraints on what we Know; the real danger to mental growth is perfect fait, doubts antidote.
- – Marvin Minsky

The world has kept sentimentalities simply because they are the most practical things in the world. They alone can make men do things. The world does not encourage a perfectly rational lover, simply because a perfect rational lover would never get married. The world does not encourage a perfectly rational army, because a perfect rational army would run away.
- – Gilbert K Chesterton

It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
- – Mark Twain

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
- – Mark Twain

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
- – Mark Twain

“Rise early. It is the early bird that catches the worm.” Don’t be fooled by this absurd law; I once knew a man who tried it. He got up by sunrise and a horse bit him.
- – Mark Twain

Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all.
- – Mark Twain

An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven’t been done before.
- – 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

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
- – Mark Twain

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.
- – Mark Twain

If Christ were here now, there is one thing he would not be – a Christian.
- – Mark Twain

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
- – Mark Twain

I like criticism, but it must be my way.
- – Mark Twain

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that make horse races.
- – Mark Twain

Scotch whisky … I always take it at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.
- – Mark Twain

I like to instruct people. It is noble to teach oneself. It is still nobler to teach others, and less trouble.
- – Mark Twain

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal valuable knowledge.
- – Mark Twain

Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.
- – Mark Twain

I have never taken any exercise, except sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any.
- – Mark Twain — (on his seventieth-birthday)

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
- – Mark Twain

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
- – Mark Twain

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.
- – Mark Twain

Genius has no youth, but starts with the ripeness of age and old experience.
- – Mark Twain

Happiness ain’t a thing in itself – it’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasant.
- – Mark Twain

Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired reminder is worth four dollars a minute.
- – Mark Twain

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.
- – Mark Twain

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
- – Mark Twain

The less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.
- – Mark Twain

It would not be possible for Noah to do in our days what he was permitted to do in his own … The inspector would come and examine the Ark, and make all sorts of objections.
- – Mark Twain (in “About All Kinds of Ships”)

Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
- – Mark Twain

There is no act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs from any motive but the one – the necessity of appeasing and contenting one’s own spirit.
- – Mark Twain

Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world – and never will.
- – Mark Twain

Principles have no real force except when one is well fed.
- – Mark Twain

Often, in matters concerning religion and politics, a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.
- – Mark Twain

No god and no religion can survive ridicule. No church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field and survive.
- – Mark Twain

Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money from them.
- – Mark Twain

A man’s private thought can never be a lie; what he thinks, is to him the truth, always.
- – Mark Twain

Life does not consist mainly – or even largely – of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head.
- – Mark Twain

Learning began with talk and it is therefore older than books. Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.
- – Mark Twain

I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time.
- – Mark Twain

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.
- – Mark Twain

St Peter’s, Vesuvius, Heaven, Hell, everything that is much described is bound to be a disappointment at first experience.
- – Mark Twain

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas, which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
- – Mark Twain

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what you really want to say.
- – Mark Twain

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
- – Mark Twain

Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur – People want to be deceived, therefore let them be deceived.
- – Romans

I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have it.
- – Thomas Jefferson

Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.
- – Lawrence Durrell

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
- – Isaac Newton

Every generation has its own problems; it ought to find out its own solutions. There is no use in our living if we can’t do things better than our fathers did.
- – Henry Ford

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
- – General Omar Bradley

People from my country believe – and rightly so – that the only thing separating man from the animals is mindless superstition and pointless ritual.
- – Latka Gravis

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
- – Thomas Jefferson

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution, it is that they cannot see the problem.
- – G K Chesterton

Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- – Fred Brooks Jr

The human mind welcomes the familiar. It is prejudiced in favor of what it knows about and against that of what it is ignorant.
- – Arthur Stone Dewing

In a complete rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less.
- – Lee Iaccocca

The future is that period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true, and happiness is assured.
- – Ambrose Bierce

Changing a college curriculum is like moving a graveyard — you never know how many friends the dead have until you try to move them.
- – Calvin Coolidge

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
- – Simon Strunsky (No Mean City, 1944)

Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go in for politics.
- – Albert Camus

Alliance, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.
- – Ambrose Bierce (Cynic’s Word Book, 1906)

Art without engineering is dreaming. Engineering without art is calculating.
- – Steven K Rooberts (in “Computing Across America”)

Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
- – Arman De Caillavet, 31 May 1913

In most of mankind gratitude is merely a secret hope for greater favours.
- – Duc De La Rochefauld

The man of science appears to be the only person who has something to say, and the only man who does not know how to say it.
- – Sir James Barrie

Beaty of style and harmony and grace and good rhytm depend on simplicity.
- – Plato

For what good science tries to eliminate, good art seeks to provoke – mystery, which is lethal to the one, and vital to the other.
- – John Fowles

First impressions are strong impressions; a title ought therefore to be well studied, and to give, so far as it limits permit, a definite and concise indication of what is to come.
- – T Clifford Allbutt

A bad beginning makes a bad ending.
- – Euripides

The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
- – T H Huxley

Scientific inquiry requires the investigators to challenge the validity and interpretation of evidence; hence the name research.
- – Wayne G Watson

Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
- – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Manuscripts containing innumerable references are more likely a sign of insecurity than a mark of scholarship.
- – William C Roberts

Great Journals are born in the hands of the editors; they die in the hands of the businessmen.
- – Bernard De Voto

Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
- – Anonymous

Conference: a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together decide that nothing can be done.
- – Fred Allen

The average PhD thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.
- – J Frank Dobie

I would never use a long word where a short one would answer the purpose. I know there are professors in this country who “ligate” ateries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding as well.
- – Oliver Wendell Holmes, sr

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
- – Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
- – Isaac Newton

In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand
- – Gerald Holton

If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders
- – Hal Abelson

In computer science, we stand on each other’s feet
- – Brian K. Reid