Teaching the layperson (divulgare) is not distorting (tergiversare) the subject, but educating the public; and it is our duty as scientists to educate without distorting the essence of the scientific knowledge attained by humanity. The future of our society depends upon this premise.

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.

Plato

A woman whose smile is open and whose expression is glad has a kind of beauty no matter what she wears.

Anne Roiphe

I had a very, very difficult relationship with my mother, who was supremely self-centred. She was hilariously self-centred. She did not really take interest in anything that didn't immediately affect her.

John Cleese

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

Leonardo da Vinci

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.

Eleanor Roosevelt

There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society's ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom. In most all the descriptions of the periods preceding the rise of mass movements there is reference to vast ennui; and in their earliest stages mass movements are more likely to find sympathizers and support among the bored than among the exploited and oppressed. To a deliberate fomenter of mass upheavals, the report that people are bored stiff should be at least as encouraging as that they are suffering from intolerable economic or political abuses.When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored. The consciousness of a barren, meaningless existence is the main fountainhead of boredom. People who are not conscious of their individual separatedness, as is the case with those who are members or a compact tribe, church, party, etcetera, are not accessible to boredom. The differentiated individual is free of boredom only when he is engaged either in creative work or some absorbing occupation or when he is wholly engrossed in the struggle for existence. Pleasure-chasing and dissipation are ineffective palliatives. Where people live autonomous lives and are not badly off, yet are without abilities or opportunities for creative work or useful action, there is no telling to what desperate and fantastic shifts they might resort in order to give meaning and purpose to their lives.

Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (

If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

Galileo Galilei

Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape, sometimes out of one's cultural myths, and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins.

Diane Wakoski

The first thing is that we're being attacked by both the Writers Guild and the Producers Guild. Both of these groups are trying to diminish the importance and strength of the director. They're trying to do it through both frontal and side attacks.

John Frankenheimer

I think public service is a calling and you do it as long as the things that brought you into the office can continue getting you up in the morning and as long as there's still work to get done.

Anthony Foxx

In other words, the Church acknowledges Science as the higher authority.

Wilhelm Ostwald