#science

"Emotional states are fairly quick bursts of neuronal gossip. Traits, on the other hand, are more like the neuronal equivalent of committed relationships."

"We must pass through the darkness, to reach the light."

"Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments."

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"

"When we say two bodies 'touch', what we mean (without knowing it) is that both electromagnetic fields are interacting to avoid physical interpenetration and ... that happens well before subatomic particles touch!"

"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry..."

"It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them."

"I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras."

"Many people find bald, unvarnished truths so disturbing, they prefer to ram their heads in the sand and start dreaming at the first sign of scientific reality."

"Before it is science and career, before it is livelihood, before even it is family or love, freedom is sound sleep and safety to notice the play of morning sun."

"If you see an antimatter version of yourself running towards you, think twice before embracing."

"The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future — must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm."

"Lo que sabemos es una gota de agua; lo que ignoramos es un océano."

"What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts."

"Men are not potatoes!"

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."

"He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing ."

"As fandom grew more variegated, genzines reflected a broadening of interests, carrying personal columns of humor and reflection, science articles, amateur fiction, stylish gossip, and inevitably, thoughtful pieces on the future of fandom."

"A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil."

"It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us."