The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.
Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope of ever behaving "normally."
Fear and Loathing '72
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
There is scarcely an occurrence in nature which, happening at a certain time, is not looked upon by some persons as a prognosticator either of good or evil. The latter are in the greatest number, so much more ingenious are we in tormenting ourselves than in discovering reasons for enjoyment in the things that surround us.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat.
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
No doubt, a scientist isn't necessarily penalized for being a complex, versatile, eccentric individual with lots of extra-scientific interests. But it certainly doesn't help him a bit.
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes).
"Song of Myself"
One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most intricate and complex of man's handiworks. The management of this complex craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common sense, and a God-given humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations.
The Mythical Man-Month
We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.
Moon Tiger
We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.
The Devils of Loudun
Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible -- or even sinful -- that you burned up a gallon of gasoline to fetch a pack of cigarettes!
Anyway: I'm not blessed or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For some folks death is a release and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.
Sandman #20: Façade
We could have saved [the Earth] but we were too damned cheap.
Then the Lord himself spoke and said: "If you can grasp what is meant by this, you will be delivered from the fear of Endings. So do not cease from searching. Yet, remember this; when you find that for which you are looking, you will at first be struck with horror and amazement. But after the horror will come understanding; and in the end you will find yourself to be set apart, and honoured above them all."
Now is the time for everyone who believes in the rule of reason to speak up against pathological science and its purveyors.
Most reformers wore rubber boots and stood on glass when God sent a current of Commonsense through the Universe.
The progress of science is often affected more by the frailties of humans and their institutions than by the limitations of scientific measuring devices. The scientific method is only as effective as the humans using it. It does not automatically lead to progress.
What is the difference between method and device? A method is a device which you use twice.
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
Those who will not reason / Perish in the act: / Those who will not act / Perish for that reason.
"Shorts"
The sum of religion, says Pythagoras, is to be like him thou worshipest. Had Pythagoras lived in our day he would have seen his mistake. The sum of modern religion is to make him thou worshipest like unto thyself.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
Hence no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into an horizontal line which is accurately straight: there will always be a bending downwards.
Those cave paintings are wonderful, but like everything we know, they are not too wonderful to be true. It is their reality that gives them wonder, and while there will never come a time when some of us will not wish for more than we can have, the happiest of us will wait confidently for other tangible finds. We treasure the cave at Altamira where a century ago a little girl first saw the great painted bison. New caves will be found, year after year, in lab or clinic or sky or ocean depth, or even in ancient markings. That is the promise of real science, which cannot allow wish to rule mind, but nonetheless finds unendingly wonderful things.
I'm sure the reason such young nitwits are produced in our schools is because they have no contact with anything of any use in everyday life.
The Satyricon
The universe may / be as great as they say. / But it wouldn't be missed / if it didn't exist.
Some people imagine that nuclear war will mean instant and painless death. But for millions this will not be the case. The accounts of the injured at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of the doctors who tried to tend them, witness to the horrors and torments which would be magnified thousands of times over in the kinds of attack we analyse here...
Doomsday
Commandment Number One of any truly civilized society is this: Let people be different.
The world is governed more by appearances than realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.
Wiping my nose on my sweater, which would now have to go to the cleaners for sure, I read Miss MacKenzie, marveling at the legibility of Trollope's hand, the fineness of it, and the fact that there were almost no emendations, perhaps one or two crossed-out words on a page. Page after page, perhaps eight hundred pages in all, this is what makes a book, this is where genius goes, what he does, what a privilege to be in his presence, to touch, to see, to read him as he writes. I wished I had a class to share this with, or Dr. V, because here on this very page, in Trollope's own hand, was Miss MacKenzie her own self sighing into the mirror over her advancing age, then moving forward to kiss her very own reflection. It would not do, would not do at all, for tears to stain these pages, so I wiped my eyes on my sleeve, yucky by now, and bowed my head over the words as I turned page after page upon page. There are churches of all kinds; this was mine.
A Round-Heeled Woman
I've been in the presence of some powerful reality distortion fields, including those that surround Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, but you, Mr. Furr, take the cake.
To Joel Furr, in alt.internet.media-coverage.
I work in celestial mechanics, but I am not interested in getting to the moon.
No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, / And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings...
Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
We dance round in a ring and suppose, / But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
"The Secret Sits"
Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.