Quantum physics, evolution, parenting, cats, and writing, my favorite topics.
“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson
“We spend the first year of a child’s life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There’s something wrong there.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Look in the mirror, and don’t be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival.”
―Stephen Jay Gould
“What you see is that the most outstanding feature of life’s history is a constant domination by bacteria.”
― Stephen Jay Gould
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.”
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”
― Carl Sagan
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.”
― Carl Sagan
“Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.”
― Carl Sagan
“I think computer viruses should count as life … I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.”
― Stephen Hawking
“Not only does God play dice but… he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.”
― Stephen Hawking
“It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.”
― Stephen Hawking
“The idea of 10 dimensions might sound exciting, but they would cause real problems if you forget where you parked your car.”
― Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design
“God abhors a naked singularity.”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
“Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.”
― Richard P. Feynman
“Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.”
― Richard P. Feynman
“We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.”
― Richard P. Feynman
“[Quantum mechanics] describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as She is – absurd.”
― Richard P. Feynman
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“Never try to outstubborn a cat.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?”
― Ernest Hemingway
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
― Ernest Hemingway
“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”
― Ernest Hemingway
“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.”
― T.S. Eliot
“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”
― T.S. Eliot
“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”
― Stephen King
“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
