Favorite Quotations

Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority. They show disrespect for elders and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize their teachers. (Socrates, 425 BC)
We trained hard...but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization. (Petronius Arbiter, 210 BC, NOTE: Apparently the attribution of this quotation to Gaius Petronius Arbiter may be a fabrication. First, the man lived from 27-66 AD, not 210 BC. Second, he may not have even said or written the above statement. If anyone has definitive proof either way, please let me know. For now please take it as a case of "If he didn't say it, he should have.")

Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as publick liberty without freedom of speech. (Benjamin Franklin, 1722)
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness. (Niels Bohr)

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. (Chuck Reid)
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. (Albert Einstein)
The test of all knowledge is experiment. (Richard P. Feynmann, Lecture Notes on Physics)
Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift. (Albert Einstein)
...there is an expanding frontier of ignorance. (Richard P. Feynmann, Lecture Notes on Physics)
The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play. (James T. Kirk, "Shore Leave", Stardate 3025.8.)
Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future. (Niels Bohr)
You think (do you not?) that you have only to state a reasonable case, and people must listen to reason and act upon it at once. It is just this conviction that makes you so unpleasant... (F.M. Cornford, Microcosmographica Academia, as quoted in Brian Urquhart's autobiography)

It has frequently been stated that scientific enlightenment and religious belief are incompatible. I consider it one of the greatest tragedies of our times that this equally stupid and dangerous error is so widely believed...(Wernher von Braun, Commencement address to St. Louis Univ., June 3, 1958)
He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it, hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart. (C.S. Lewis, 1898-1963)

The decline in American pride, patriotism, and piety can be directly attributed to the extensive reading of so-called "science fiction" by our young people. This poisonous rot about creatures not of God's making, societies of "aliens" without a good Christian among them, and raw sex between unhuman beings with three heads and God alone knows what sort of reproductive apparatus keeps our young people from realizing the true will of God. (Jerry Falwell, "Can Our Young People Find God in the Pages of Trashy Magazines? No, Of Course Not!" Reader's Digest, Aug. 1985: 142-157)

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