Words To Live By
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
Science says: "We must live," and seeks the means of prolonging, increasing, facilitating and amplifying life, of making it tolerable and acceptable. Wisdom says: "We must die," and seeks how to make us die well.
-Miguel De Unamuno
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be...This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.
-Isaac Asimov
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-Arthur C. Clarke, Rama. ("Clarke's Third Law")
"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
-Anderson's Reformulation of Clarke's Third Law
"Any sufficiently advanced anything is indistinguishable from utter nonsense."
-Digby's Generalization of Clarke's Third Law
"Especially if it was sufficiently advenced nonsense to begin with."
-Zumwalt's Corollary to Digby's Generalization of Clarke's Third Law
"Unless, of course, despite odds to the contrary, some sort of point comes from that advanced, technomancer's nonsense."
-Steed's Contradiction to Zumwalt's Corollary to Digby's Generalization of Clarke's Third Law
Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.
-Saul Alinsky
"An experiment may be considered a success if no more than half of your data must be discarded to obtain correspondence with your theory."
-Correspondence Corollary (from Murphy's Laws)
Weep not that the world changes--did it keep A stable, changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.
-William Cullen Bryant
There is something in the pang of change
More than the heart can bear,
Unhappiness remembering happiness.
-Euripides
Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow's joy
is possible only if today's makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty
of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one.
-André Gide
You cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are continually
flowing in.
-Heraclitus
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
-Lord Tennyson
There was no such thing on this earth as real change. You could change
husbands, but not the situation. You could change who, but not what. We're
all just spinning here.
-Anne Tyler
Come, for the House of Hope is built on sand: bring wine, for the fabric of
life is as weak as the wind.
-Häfiz
It is hard to have patience with people who say "There is no death" or
"Death doesn't matter." There is death. And whatever is matters. And
whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and
irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.
-C. S. Lewis
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
-T. S. Eliot
I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations- one can either do
this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do
not do it- you will regret both.
-Søren Kierkegaard
"I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education."
-Wilson Mizner
Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one
usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret.
-Mary McCarthy
Do. Or do not. There is no try.
-Yoda
"The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more
people than all the wars in history."
-Carl Rowan, American Libraries
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
-Billy Wilder
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all they
getting get understanding.
-Bible Proverbs 4:7
"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what
nobody has thought."
-Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"History never looks like History when you are living through it."
-John Gardner
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the
audience is deaf.
-Walter Lippmann
"Nothing is as embarrasing as watching someone do something that you said
couldn't be done."
-Sam Ewing, Mature Living
Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither
of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something
which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any
rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not
think that I know what I do not know.
-Socrates
"We must use time as a tool, not as a couch."
-John F. Kennedy
"Truth is eternal, knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse
them."
--Madeleine L'Engle, An Acceptable Time
The shortest path between two truths in the real domain passes through the
complex domain.
-Jacques Hadamard
A life without cause is a life without effect.
-Barbarella
When one eye is fixed upon your destination, there is only one eye left with
which to see the way there.
-Matthew Wallace
When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so
regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for
us.
-Alexander Graham Bell
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
-Niels Bohr
Do not believe in a thing because you have read about it in a book. Do not
believe in a thing because another man has said it was true. Do not believe
in words because they are hallowed by tradition. Find out the truth for
yourself. Reason it out. That is realization.
-Swami Vivekananda
Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never
were and ask why not.
-George Bernard Shaw
He that will not reason is a bigot, He that cannot reason is a fool, He that
dares not reason is a slave.
-William Drummond
"Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know
how to lie well."
-Samuel Butler
"Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
-Ambrose Bierce
"The more you study, the more you find out you don't know, but the more you
study, the closer you come."
-Cozy Cole
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once."
-Anonymous
"Logic merely enables one to be wrong with authority."
-Doctor Who
"Yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream."
-Kahlil Gibran
"My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my
life there."
-Charles F. Kettering
"Each of us should do something every day that we do not want to do but know
we should do, to strengthen our backbone and put iron in our soul."
- Henry Hitt Crane
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the begining of the end, but it is
perhaps the end of the begining."
-Winston Churchill
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
-Doctor Who
"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow
in Australia."
-Charles Schultz
Don't ask, "What if it doesn't work?" Ask instead, "What if it does?"
-Betsy Rez
"We always have time enough, if we use it right."
-Goethe
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
-Andre Gide
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
-Benjamin Franklin
Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
-Bette Davis
Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.
-Edward R. Murrow
Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
-John Dewey
Cheer up, the worst is yet to come.
-Philander Johnson
Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.
-Voltaire
"Nothing is ever a complete failure; it can always serve as a bad example."
-Carlson's Consolation (from Murphy's Laws)
"There is nothing more immediately dangerous to mankind than force without wisdom."
-Anonymous
"What is 'real'? How do you define 'real'?"
-Morpheus, 'The Matrix'
"I know what you mean. The question is... do you?"
-Phong, 'ReBoot'
"THIMK!"
-Anonymous
"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and were wearing sunglasses."
-Elwood Blues
"Let's go."
-'Joliet' Jake Blues
"We must go forwards, not backwards; upwards, not forwards; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!"
-John Steed, suggesting a course of action to Xur
"We're on a mission from God."
-Elwood Blues
"If mankind put half the energy into the space program that he put into the study of the female breast, we would be running hot-dog stands on the moon by now."
-Anonymous
"A great pleasure in life is doing what other people say you cannot do."
-Walter Gagehot
"We are continuously faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems."
-Walter Gagehot
"I don't work here. I'm a consultant."
-Anonymous
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental."
-Anonymous
"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest."
-G'Kar, 'Survivors'
"I know, I know. It's a Russian thing. When we're about to do something stupid, we like to catalogue the full extent of our stupdity for future reference."
-Ivanova, 'A Voice in the Wilderness II'
"And so it begins. You have forgotten something."
-Kosh, 'Chrysalis'
"*We* are the universe, trying to understand itself."
-Delenn, 'Passing through Gethsemane'
"G'Quan wrote, 'There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost it's way.' The war we fight is not against powers and principalities. It is against chaos.. and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope. The death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender."
-G'Kar, Babylon 5
"Well, Beaker, now we know that was entirely too much gunpowder!"
-Bunsen Honeydew
"Cannot run out of time! There is infinite time! You are finite. Zathras is finite. This... is wrong tool. No. No, not good. No. No... never use this."
-Zathras, Babylon 5
"There is no spoon."
-Child Potential, 'The Matrix'
"I thought I could navigate at the speed of light, but I just can’t get me head around it! ...Gordon Bennett, that was a close one... Look, we’re travelling at the speed of light, that means that once we see something, we’ve already passed through it! Even with an IQ of 6000, it’s still brown trousers time."
-Holly, 'Red Dwarf'
"I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm going to take a stand. I'm going to defend it. Right or wrong, I'm going to defend it."
-Cameron Frye, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"
"Would you prepared if gravity reversed itself? The only thing I can't figure out is how to keep the change in my pockets... I've got it! Nudity!"
-Dr. John Steed, quoting 'Real Genius' after a long night in the lab
"Smolin's criterium for interestingness is the ability to generate complexity. Due to this, the Nexus is an interesting place. In the extreme."
-Dr. John Steed
"If coincidences are just coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?"
-Fox Mulder
"Ad Astra Per Aspera
A Rough Road Leads To The Stars"
-Apollo 1
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross... but it's not for the timid."
-Q
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'Kai, what did you do *now*!?'."
-Dr. John Steed, correcting Isaac Asimov
"Most men are of naught further use in their lives but as machines for converting food into shit."
-Leonardo da Vinci, quoted by Count Pyotr Vorkisigan
"As the days go by, we face the increasing inevitability that we are alone in a godless, uninhabited, hostile, and meaningless universe. Still, you've got to laugh, haven't you?"
-Holly, 'Red Dwarf'
"We do the best we can with what we are given. We are but imperfect reflections of the universe. We cannot change the past, only create a future in which such things do not recur. Unfortunately, we're still working on that last part."
-G'Kar
"Sokath, his eyes uncovered!"
-Tamarian idiom
"People like us, who believe in physics and understand the nature of things within the Nexus, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
-Dr. John Steed
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
-Hanlon's Razor
And now, presenting House Delphi's first AUDIO QUOTE!
(This is a Layer-3 compressed WAV file. If you can't hear it, download the file to your computer, rename it as an mp3 file, and play it as an mp3.)
Back to the Main Page