...where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge.

Wit and Humor -- if any difference, it is in duration -- lightning and electric light. Same material, apparently; but one is vivid, and can do damage -- the other fools along and enjoys elaboration.

Mark Twain

Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.

Karl Popper

There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe... the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.

Mark Twain

There is no Gain in the world: so be it: but neither is there any Loss. There is never any failure to this infinite freshness of life, and the ancient novelty is forever renewed. We realize the world better if we imagine it, not as a Progress to Prim Perfection, but as the sustained upleaping of a Fountain, the pillar of a Glorious Flame. For, after all, we cannot go beyond the ancient image of Heraclitus, the Ever-living Flame, kindled in due measure and in the like measure extinguished. That translucent and mysterious Flame shines undyingly before our eyes, never for two moments the same, and always miraculously incalculable, an ever-flowing stream of fire. The world is moving, men tell us, to this, to that, to the other. Do not believe them! Men have never known what the world is moving to. Who foresaw--to say nothing of older and vaster events--the Crucifixion? What Greek or Roman in his most fantastic moments prefigured our thirteenth century? What Christian foresaw the Renaissance? Who ever really expected the French Revolution? We cannot be too bold, for we are ever at the incipient point of some new manifestation far more overwhelming than all our dreams. No one can foresee the next aspect of the Fountain of Life. And all the time the Pillar of that Flame is burning at exactly the same height it has always been burning at! The World is everlasting Novelty, everlasting Monotony. It is just which aspect you prefer. You will always be right.

Havelock Ellis, Impressions and

The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.

Hannah Whitall Smith

I just can't wait for the future.

Amanda Seyfried

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sound is the vocabulary of nature.

Pierre Schaeffer

There are plenty of problems in the world, and doubtless climate change - or whatever the currently voguish phrase for it all is - certainly is one of them. But it's low on my list.

P. J. O'Rourke

As a remedy against all ills; poverty, sickness, and melancholy only one thing is absolutely necessary; a liking for work.

Charles Baudelaire

Should we continue to look upwards Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished The ideal is terrifying to behold, lost as it is in the depths, small, isolated, a pin-point, brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds. (Les Miserables)

Victor Hugo

We have a project with Unocal here in Los Angeles, where we as an environmental organization, the oil company, and the state all get together to promote the recycling of used motor oil.

Ted Danson