Quotes

I’ve been collecting these quotes since 1998. Some of them are funny, some others thought provoking or at least original, but I don’t necessarily find all of them true.

1. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all. Winston S. Churchill
3. It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Teddy Roosevelt
4. Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. Pablo Picasso
5. To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded. Ralph Waldo Emerson
6. Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have. Barry Goldwater
7. A promise is a cloud, fulfillment is rain. Arabian Proverb
8. There’s no sense in being precise when you don’t even know what you are talking about. John von Neumann
9. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. Thomas Edison
10. The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell
11. There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking. Joshua Reynolds
12. Do what you do best, and link to the rest. Jeff Jarvis
13. Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If it’s original, you’ll have to ram it down their throats. Howard Aiken
14. I think the skills useful for one are often useful for the other. Coding and music performance are fairly different, other than being disciplines that reward practice, but software design and composition have a lot of similarities. Both involve manipulating and coordinating abstractions, and envisioning their realization, in the case of programs that are processes, in and over time. I’ve certainly found software design satisfies the creative urge I intended to pursue in composition, and has completely displaced it. Rich Hickey
15. If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play. John Cleese
16. Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. Robert Heinlein
17. I.G. Petrovskii, who taught me in 1966: genuine mathematicians do not gang up, but the weak need gangs in order to survive. V.I. Arnold
18. There never have been and never will be any applied sciences, there are only applications of sciences. Louis Pasteur
19. There exists yet another phenomenon which is comparable in its inconceivability with the inconceivable effectiveness of mathematics in physics noted by Wigner - this is the equally inconceivable ineffectiveness of mathematics in biology. I.M. Gelfand
20. Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it. Albert Einstein
21. A self-organized system must be always alive and without finalizing, since conclusion is another name for death. Stafford Beer
22. What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration? It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy balance; in a word it is all that introduces order, all that gives unity, that permits us to see clearly and to comprehend at once both the ensemble and the details. Henri Poincaré
23. …once we have learned a conceptual system, it is neurally instantiated in our brains and we are not free to think just anything. George Lakoff - Philosophy of the Flesh: The embodied Mind and its challenge to western Thought
24. You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you. Karl Popper
25. The more deeply we study the nature of time, the better we understand that duration means invention, creation of forms, continuous elaboration of the absolutely new. Bergson
26. Remember, people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold, but so does a hard-boiled egg. Anonymous
27. DEFINITION: Computer - A device designed to speed and automate errors.
28. Qui ignorabat, ignorabitur. (The ignorant will remain unnoticed.)
29. Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur. (Whatever is said in Latin seems profound.)
30. Si hoc legere scis, nimis eruditionis habes. (If you can read this, you are overeducated.)
31. Natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest. Hugo Devries, 1904
32. All science is either physics or stamp collecting. Ernest Rutherford
33. The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. Steven Weinberg
34. An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a very narrow field. Niels Bohr
35. The most fruitful developments have always emerged when two kinds of thinking met.
36. Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning. Werner Heisenberg
37. Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
38. The most extensive computation known has been conducted over the last billion years on a planet-wide scale: it is the evolution of life. The power of this computation is illustrated by the complexity and beauty of its crowning achievement, the human brain. David Rogers
39. There are many many statements in the literature which say that information is the same as entropy. The reason for this was told by Tribus. The story goes that Shannon didn’t know what to call his measure so he asked von Neumann, who said ‘You should call it entropy … [since] … no one knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.’ M. Tribus, Energy and Information, Scientific American, 1971
40. Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody is watching. Mark Twain
41. The church is a hospital for sinners, not a club for saints.
42. Most people stumble over the truth, now and then, but they usually manage to pick themselves up and go on, anyway. Winston Churchill
43. The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. Albert Einstein
44. Make no friendship with an elephant keeper unless you have room to entertain an elephant.
45. I suppose some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. T. S. Elliot
46. A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems. Paul Erdős
47. Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. George Santayana
48. Reality is for people who can’t handle fantasy.
49. Stocks are now at what looks like a permanent high plateau. Irving Fisher, 2 weeks before the 1929 stock market crash
50. There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot. Steven Wright
51. Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work. Gustave Flaubert
52. A friend is someone who sees through you, and still enjoys the view. Wilma Askinas
53. You present these recondite matters with too much evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner. Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) Two New Sciences
54. If you look around the table and you don’t know who the sucker is, its you.
55. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you. And then you win. Gandhi
56. I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know. Mark Twain
57. If I have made myself clear, you must have misunderstood me. Alan Greenspan
58. When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Japanese proverb
59. A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. William Shedd
60. There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don’t know what it’s a plan for. Fred Hoyle
61. All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo
62. You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. Anne Lamot
63. You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.
64. Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Susan Ertz
65. If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Voltaire
66. Live as one already dead. Japanese saying
67. Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement. Buster Bunny (Tiny Toons)
68. People demand the freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. Kirkegarde
69. I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people, because they give nothing for nothing. They only help those who help themselves. Andrew Carnegie
70. Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that no matter how high we achieve, we are never satisfied. Machiavelli
71. If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too. W. Somerset Maugham
72. True power and wealth are of the mind.
73. All models are wrong. Some models are useful. George Box
74. Giving power and money to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. P.J. O’Rourke
75. Traveler, there is no path. Paths are made by walking. Antonio Machado
76. The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits. Plutarch
77. Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1 1/2 tons. Popular Mechanics, March 1949
78. The wages of sin are death, but after taxes are taken out, it’s just a tired feeling. Paula Poundstone
79. Writing is like Prostitution: First you do it for the love of it. Then you do it for a few friends. And finally you do it for money. Moliere
80. …a man of great talent will normally pay less attention to other people’s foolishness than would a fool. Proust
81. Do not be proud of your knowledge. Listen to the ignorant and the wise. Art has no limit, and no artist’s skills are perfect. Truth may lie as hidden in the earth as copper, or it may be found at play upon the lips of maidens bent above their grindstones. Ptah-hotep, Egyptian teacher, c.2540 BC
82. The person who doesn’t read lives only one life. The reader lives 5,000. Reading is immortality backwards. Umberto Eco
83. It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
84. Science and technology will shift from a past emphasis on motion, force, and energy to communication, organization, programming and control. John von Neumann, 1950
85. The Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of God or of the truth, as the heretic is born from the saint and the possesed from the seer. Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
86. Quiet people have the loudest minds. Stephen Hawking
87. How beautiful is youth, that is always slipping away! Whoever wants to be happy, let him be so: about tomorrow there’s no knowing. Lorenzo de’ Medici
88. A nation of one language and the same customs is weak and fragile. King Stephen I of Hungary
89. We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self control. Inscription, 6000 year-old Egyptian tomb
90. Do not speak – unless it improves on silence. Buddhist Proverb
91. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil, but for good people to do evil - that takes religion. Steven Weinberg
92. Engineers learn to build, scientists build to learn. Unknown
93. Vision without execution is a hallucination. Thomas Edison
94. The success of any physical investigation depends upon the judicious selection of what is to be observed as of primary importance. James Clerk Maxwell
95. Philosophy may be ignored but not escaped; and those who most ignore escape least. David Hawkins
96. An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents… What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning. Max Planck - The Philosophy of Physics, 1936
97. Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal. Friedrich Nietzsche
98. You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can not fool all the people all of the time. Abraham Lincoln

Hungarian Quotes

1. Van egy tibeti mondás, amely szerint jobb tigrisként élni egy napig, mint ezer éven át birkaként.
2. A gondolkodás nagyon nehéz munka, ezért foglalkoznak vele olyan kevesen. Henry Ford
3. Variatio delectat, mondták a régi rómaiak, a változatosság örömöt ad.
4. Ha egy óceán partján kell élnünk, jobban tesszük, ha megtanítjuk a gyermekeinket úszni, minthogy falat építünk az óceán körré. Marcell Frydman: Televízió és agresszió
5. Varnus Xavér: Hiszek Istenben, és egyre inkább értem, miért írta egykor Márai: Aki keresztény, végzetesen és alkatilag az, nem végezheti másként, mint hogy a keresztény egyházak ellenzékébe kerül. Nemhiába volt Goethe halálig pogány, és nem akarta Tolsztojt eltemetni az ortodox egyház.
6. Érték van egy tibeti mondás, amely szerint jobb tigrisként élni egy napig, mint ezer éven át birkaként.
7. Mindig ugyanaz a nóta: angyalokal szeretnénk társalogni – és ismerősőkkel kell vacsoráznunk egy vendéglőben.
8. Két kategóriába tartoznak az emberek: az egyikbe azok, akik keresik az élet értelmét és nem találják, a másikba azok, akik nem keresték ugyan, de megtalálták.
9. Imádság nélkül lehet élni, de az imádság lehetősége nélkül nem.
10. Bárkit szerethetünk, kivéve felebarátunkat. A vallások azért győztek, mert tagadták ezt az evidenciát. Minthogy a felebaráti szeretet nem valósulhatott meg, nem kockáztatták azt, hogy túlhaladottá válnak. A parancs mindig ‘ érvényes’ maradt, ‘új’, meghökkentő, kívánatos, általánosan elfogadott parancs.
11. Nagy kiváltság megőrizni az ép eszünket: bármikor megvonhatják tőlünk.
12. Tudni, hogy mi a fontos – az a legritkább dolog a világon. Mindazok közül akiket ismertem, oly kevesen tűntek ki ebben a tekintetben, hogy akár meg is nevezhetném őket. Négyen vagy öten voltak összesen.
13. Abban a reményben olvasok ilyen sokat, hogy egy szép napon olyan magányra bukkanok, ami nagyobb, mint az enyém.
14. Bármilyen érdemes ember is, aki becsvágyó, csak a felszínen lehet tisztességes. Csak a közönyös emberekben bízzál meg.
15. Annak alapján fognak megítélni, amit írtam, nem pedig annak alapján, amit olvastam. Ezt a nevetségesen nyilvánvaló tényt gyakran tévesztem szem elől. Minden könyv után, amit felfaltam, némi érdemet tulajdonítok magamnak.
16. Abbahagyta az írást: már nem volt mit rejtegetnie.
17. Száz levélből, amit egy író kap, egyetlen egy érdemel figyelmet. Csaknem valamennyit aszerint írják, hogy az újságok, folyóiratok mennyit foglalkoznak Veled. Nem az inspirálja őket, amit írtál, hanem az, amit Rólad írtak. Minden területen minden second hand. Legyünk szerények! Én megpróbáltam a szerénységet, váltakozó sikerrel. De azért remélem, hogy egy szép napon elsajátítom. Erre való a halál.
18. A virtuozitás minden téren a semmi jele, a civilizációk hajnalán nem is találkozunk vele. Ezért van oly sok igazság a kezdetkor, és olyan kevés a siker beteljesedése idején. Csak a vágy pillanata számít, mindenben. Ami utána következik finomkodás, csak rutin.
19. Egyetlen aranyszabály van az irodalomban és a művészetekben: nem hagyni hátra magunkról teljes képet. Emile Cioran
20. rara temporum felicitate, ubi sentire quae velis, et quae sentias dicere licet (Tacitus) - ritkán vagy olyan szerencsés helyzetben, amikor úgy vélekedhetsz, ahogy akarsz, és elmondhatod, amit érzel
21. nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit (Terentius) - nincs már olyan mondás, amelyet ne mondtak volna
22. errare humanum est, but in errore perseverare stultum est - tévedni emberi dolog, de a hibában megmaradni ostobaság
23. A képzeletlöero fontosabb, mint a tudás. Einstein
24. Törodés az emberiséggel és annak sorsával - ez álljon az érdeklodése középpontjában minden technikai erőfeszítésnek. Einstein
25. A tekintély iránt mutatott tiszteletlenségemért a sors azzal büntetett, hogy engem tett tekintéllyé. Einstein
26. Nem minden megszámlálható, ami számít, és nem minden számít, ami megszámlálható. Einstein (princetoni dolgozószobájának faláról.)
27. Sose aggódj amiatt, hogy nem érted a matematikát. Biztosíthatlak, nekem még több gondom van vele. Einstein ( levele egy 12 éves diáknak.)
28. Csak akkor megyek társaságba, amikor kedvem szottyan unatkozni. Jules Renard
29. Nem mindenki muzsikus, aki hegedűvel mászkál. Abraham A. Santa Clara
30. Ha majom néz a tükörbe, nem nézhet vissza apostol. Lichtenberg
31. Ahol több az érzés, több a szenvedés is. Leonardo de Vinci
32. A jó házasság feltétele, hogy a férj süket legyen, a feleség pedig vak. Szókratész
33. A tudást csak akkor tudjuk megemészteni, ha jó étvággyal habzsoltuk. Anatole France (1844-1924)
34. Recte dicit Aristoteles: radices doctrinae amaras, fructus dulces esse. Helyesen mondja Arisztotelész, hogy a tudomány gyökerei keserűek, gyümölcsei pedig édesek.
35. Gazdag Papa: Texasi mondás: Mindenki a mennybe akar kerülni, de senki nem akar meghalni. A kisfütü kritizál, a nyertes elemez. A kritika elvakít, az elemzés felnyitja az ember szemét.
36. Tévednek azok, akik szerint a matematikai tudományok semmit sem mondanak a szépről vagy a jóról. Arisztotelész
37. Mai agyunkban a logikus gondolatok és következtetések lefolyása olyan ösztönök pörlekedésének és harcának felel meg, amelyek egyenként, önmagukban mind nagyon logikátlanok és jogosulatlanok; mi rendszerint csak e harc eredményeiről értesülünk. Friedrich Nietzsche: A vidám tudomány
38. Az optimizmus az emberiség ópiuma! Az egészséges lélek ostobaságtól büzlik. Milan Kundera

References

[1] Romsics, Ignác; Béla K. Király. Geopolitics in the Danube Region: Hungarian Reconciliation Efforts, 1848-1998. p. 107.