Last updated: 6 June 2005.

I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own. -- John Bartlett

To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour -- William Blake

God is a geometer. -- Plato

God does not play dice with the universe. -- Albert Einstein

Who are you to tell God what to do? -- Neils Bohr

God not only plays dice, but sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen. -- Stephen Hawking

I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another. -- Thomas Jefferson

Religion flourishes in greater purity without the aid of Government. -- James Madison

The United States has some 300 Christian denominations, a slew of deeply divided Jewish traditions, a growing but divided Muslim constituency, plus hundreds of [other] faith expressions ... not to mention countless splinter groups within these groupings. -- Tom Ehrich

The separation of church and state is a tradition rooted in a wisdom this nation will forget at its own peril. -- Paul Simmons

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise [currency worth an eighth of a cent], walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and think 'business as usual.' But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening. -- from the Life of Pi [by Yann Martel]

There is a central core of universal values that any truly modern society must possess, and these are very much the values that science promotes: Rationality, creativity, the search for truth, adherence to codes of behavior, and a certain constructive subversivedness. -- Ismail Serageldin

Religion is a search for security, not a search for truth. -- Bishop John Spong

One needs a capacity for self doubt and compromise in order to govern a diverse society. ... There is no one who will take away human freedom faster than a true believer who gets the upper hand. -- Tom Ehrich

Fear is the most divine emotion. -- Zora Neale Hurston

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -- Blaise Pascal

The Bible's moral message has nothing to do with its antequated view of the Universe. -- J. David Pleins, Prof. of Religious Studies, SCU

Creationism never goes away, it just evolves. -- Molleen Matsumura

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it ... You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world ... My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a desease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others. -- Bertrand Russell

Children have more need of models than of critics. -- Joseph Joubert

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct. -- Benjamin Disraeli

Truth is whatever survives the clensing fires of skepticism after they have burned away error and superstition. The healthy growth of civilization depends on skepticism more than it does on faith. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. -- Thomas Huxley

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everything I do is about equal opportunity. Race, gender, sexual orientation -- let's get over it. Let's celebrate our differences. -- Billie Jean King

Hopefully we've all started toward understanding that there are other ways to view the world than our own. -- Dave Wainio

Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human liberty. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. -- William Pitt

Those who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin

The government has demonized all drug use without differentiation, has systematically and hysterically resisted science and has turned millions of stable, productive citizens into criminals. -- Ira Glasser

Our nation leads the world in percentage of people locked up; we have only 5% of the world's people, but a full 25% of its prisoners. ... As of 1996, over 60% of all [federal] prisoners were there for drug related offenses. The number of such prisoners has increased sevenfold since 1980. -- S. Heilig, MPH and D. E. Smith, MD, [San Francisco Medicine, Feb. 2000, p. 17]

Prison is designed to break one's spirit and destroy one's resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality -- all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are. -- Nelson Mandela

Global population control is always something that's going to happen ... It was going to happen when you were 3 billion in 1960. Now that you're 6 billion it's still something that's going to happen ... You've seen the ads for sending food to starving peoples around the world. Have you ever seen ads for sending contraceptives? -- Ishmael [Daniel Quinn]

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry, -- H. L. Mencken

Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to a still greater increase in population. -- Peter Farb

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. -- William Jennings Bryan

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. -- Albert Einstein

Society is infected by the monomania of accounting. For it, the only thing that has value is what can be counted ... It never hesitates to sacrifice human life to figures that look well on paper ... -- Simone Weil

We tend to meet new situations by reorganizing. And what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization. -- Petronius Arbiter (1st-century Roman writer)

There was a period maybe five or eight years ago when deconstructionism was in its heyday, and people would say, how do you really know? How do you really know there are protons inside the nucleus? -- Persis Drell

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not more so. -- Albert Einstein

Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone. -- Gertrude Stein

With the Greeks, geometry was regarded with the utmost respect, and consequently none were held in greater honour than mathematicians, but we Romans have restricted this art to the practical purposes of measuring and reckoning. -- Cicero

Time is the sphere that encompasses the world. -- Pythagoras

The solution of the difficulties which formerly surrounded the mathematically infinite is probably the greatest achievement of which our age has to boast. -- Bertrand Russell

The study of mathematics develops and sets into operation a mental organism more valuable than a thousand eyes, because through it alone can truth be apprehended. -- Plato

Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things. -- Henri Poincare

Poetry is the art of giving different names to the same thing. -- Anonymous

In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in language that everyone can understand. In poetry you are bound to say ... something that everybody knows already, in words that nobody can understand. -- Paul Dirac

Music is number made audible. -- [attributed to] Pythagoras

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who would consort with demons to make impious prophecies. -- Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (rough translation from DeGenesi ad Litteram, Book 2, Ch. 17, Paragrah 37)

A study of the history of mathematics will not make better mathematicians but gentler ones, it will enrich their minds, mellow their hearts, and bring out their finer qualities. -- G. Sarton

Descartes commanded the future from his study more than Napoleon from his throne. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

History is the unfolding of miscalculations. -- Barbara Tuchman

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. -- the Duke of Wellington

The past may, to some extent be understood, and it is our obligation to do that, but it cannot be corrected. -- Wendell Berry

There comes a moment for all of us when our childhood ceases to be an excuse. -- Sasha (from John Le Carre, Absolute Friends)

The First Amendment seized him, or at least his own rudamentary understanding of it, and he felt compelled to speak freely. -- John Grisham

The right to speak and the right to vote are no more valuable than the rights to remain silent and to abstain. -- anonymous

Nature, Mr. Allnutt, is what we were put here to rise above -- Rose Sayer (from C. S. Forester, The African Queen)

What would you do with a brain if you had one? -- Dorothy (to the Scarecrow in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz)

If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. -- E. M. Pugh

Why do we tend to evaluate artificial intelligence by comparing it to human intelligence? -- Mike Jackson

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead. -- Aristotle

The paramount obligation of a college is to develop in its students the ability to think clearly and independently and the ability to live confidently, courageously and hopefully. -- Ellen Browning Scripps

Scientific research consists in seeing what everyone else has seen, but thinking what no one else has thought. -- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think. -- James Beattie

By and large, "knowing how" matters more than "knowing what". -- Gian-Carlo Rota

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It is being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't. -- Anatole France

It is a paradox of our times that the increase in information has been paralleled by an increase in ignorance. -- Jonathan Schell

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. -- William Butler Yeats

Education is not a means to an end. It is an end in itself. -- Robert Heinlein

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't. -- Mark Twain

Education is what remains when you have forgotten every fact you know. -- anonymous

To succeed with my generation, one must bind the message to music, fashion, and television. -- Adam Werbach ([then] 24-year-old President of the Sierra Club)

A college degree has become one more thing for us to acquire, rather than a passion for us to pursue. -- Leon McGinnis

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. -- Theodore Roosevelt

Freedom is a challenge. You decide who you are by what you do. It is like a question, like a fork in the road. An ongoing question you have to keep answering correctly. There is a touch of the high wire to it. -- Hunter S. Thompson

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. -- T. S. Eliot

If you're not failing occasionally, you're not testing the limits of your ability. -- Anonymous

I wasted time and now doth time waste me. -- William Shakespeare (Richard II)

No wise man ever wished to be younger. -- Jonathan Swift

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. -- Fred Allen

Pareto's Principle: 80% of your work is done with 20% of your tools.

Most new ideas are bad and most original work fails. -- anonymous

The mathematics professor of popular legend is absentminded. He usually appears in public with a lost umbrella in each hand. He prefers to face the blackboard and to turn his back to the class. He writes a, he says b, he means c; but it should be d. ... -- George Polya

Never express yourself more clearly than you think. -- Neils Bohr

If I had more time, I would write a shorter letter. -- Blaise Pascal

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length. -- Carl Friedrich Gauss

[Gauss] is like the fox, who effaces his tracks in the sand with his tail. -- Niels Abel

Every truth has four corners. As a teacher, I give you one corner. It is for you to find the other three. -- Confucius

Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself. -- Chinese Proverb

There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about. -- Pot Shots No. 729 [Arleigh Brilliant]

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say. -- Marshall McLuhan

Who among us thinks himself deficient in common sense? -- Rene Descartes [paraphrased -- Descartes rarely troubled to be concise.]

Wise men, though all laws were abolished, would lead the same lives. -- Aristophanes

The unexamined life is not worth living. -- Socrates

Additional material can be found on the web site of Gabriel Robins