It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I’m right.

Molière

You cannot open a book without learning something.

Confucius

I'm tired of this back-slappin' “isn't humanity neat” bullshit. We're a virus with shoes.

Bill Hicks

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

Albert Einstein

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

Richard Feynman

I've been called worse things by better men.

Pierre Trudeau, upon hearing Nixon had called him an asshole

I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I'll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is… I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.

Richard Feynman

The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift; that's why they call it the present.

Eleanor Roosevelt (also attributed to several others)

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

Eleanor Roosevelt

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

Niels Bohr

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

Terry Pratchett, “Lords and Ladies”

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

Jane Austen

“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”

Cassandra Clare, “Clockwork Angel”

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where's the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

George Carlin

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.

Douglas Adams, “The Salmon of Doubt”

Holy Writ was intended to teach men how to go to Heaven not how the heavens go.

Galileo Galilei

When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth.

Jess C. Scott, “The Intern”

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

Isaac Asimov, “Foundation”

Once I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: “No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.

Elbert Hubbard

I'm not young enough to know everything.

The Admirable Crichton, “J.M. Barrie”

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens

Jimi Hendrix