Please read This is Not a Wiki. —WilliamLewis
This Wiki is purely to contain the plethora of random facts, quotations, and observations that I simply don't have the time or energy to attempt to keep organized in my brain. This is a personal reference database.
Boo.
Quotations
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch
of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his
head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same
way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and
all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand
rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand
it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously
uses his intelligence.
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of
their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in
terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand
on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems
like a minute. That's relativity.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life
cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions,
outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot
help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure
of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose
a holy curiosity.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be
without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.
So long as they don't get violent, I want to let everyone say what they wish, for I myself have
always said exactly what pleased me.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
If A equals success, then the formula is _ A = _ X + _ Y + _ Z. _ X is work. _ Y is play.
_ Z is keep your mouth shut.
A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.
For any one who is pervaded with the sense of causal law in all that happens, who accepts in
real earnest the assumption of causality, the idea of a Being who interferes with the sequence
of events in the world is absolutely impossible. Neither the religion of fear nor the social — moral
religion can have any hold on him.
All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking.
