We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.

Sam Harris

Truth is what remains when people stop believing.

Stevenvh

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

Galileo Galilei

Not even an ocean of blood can drown the truth.

Maxim Gorky, “The mother”

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.

William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet”

To those who do not know Mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty of nature. … If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in.

Richard Feynman

The certain proof that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the Universe is that no one has bothered yet to make contact with us.

unknown

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Mark Twain

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

Blaise Pascal

I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.

Oscar Wilde

I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

Oscar Wilde

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Albert Einstein

I'm sorry if any of you are catholic. I'm not sorry if you're offended, I'm actually just sorry by the fact that you're catholic.

Bill Hicks

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Terry Pratchett

A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Max Planck

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

Albert Einstein

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

Sir Winston Churchill

If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.

Will Rogers

The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant. His culture is based on “I am not too sure”.

H.L. Mencken

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

Richard Feynman

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

Bertrand Russell

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

Bertrand Russell

The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

Richard Feynman

People want peace so badly that governments ought to get out of their way and let them have it.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

What has been affirmed without proof can also be denied without proof.

Euclid