“Climate is your personality; weather is your mood.” — J. Marshall Shepherd, past president, American Meteorological Society, quoted in Andrew Revkin and Lisa Mechaley, Weather: An Illustrated History, 2018
Quotations
Meditation
Written by Albert Einstein at the invitation of a German magazine, 1921:
What Artistic and Scientific Experience Have in Common
Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, we are engaged in science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaningful, then we are engaged in art. Common to both is the loving devotion to that which transcends personal concerns and volition.
(From Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, eds., Albert Einstein, the Human Side: New Glimpses From His Archives, 1979.)
Certainty
“Suppose a contradiction were to be found in the axioms of set theory. Do you seriously believe that that bridge would fall down?” — Frank Ramsey, to Wittgenstein
“Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether, say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane.” — Richard W. Hamming
Unquote
“The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.” — Montaigne
“A Bully Is Always a Coward”
English proverbs:
- Give neither counsel nor salt till you are asked for it.
- A hedge between keeps friendship green.
- A fault confessed is half redressed.
- A hungry man is an angry man.
- Please your eye and plague your heart.
- If you run after two hares you will catch neither.
- A good lawyer makes a bad neighbor.
- Speak fair and think what you will.
- It is not the suffering but the cause which makes a martyr.
- A fool will laugh when he is drowning.
- A foe is better than a dissembling friend.
- A disease known is half cured.
- Let your purse be your master.
- Short counsel is good counsel.
And “Whosoever draws his sword against the prince must throw the scabbard away.”
Misc
- POSSESSIONLESSNESSES has nine Ss.
- Trains are older than bicycles.
- 87 percent of the human population lives in the Northern Hemisphere.
- This sentence no verb.
- “God pity a one-dream man.” — Robert H. Goddard
Roald Dahl wrote the film adaptations for two of Ian Fleming’s novels, You Only Live Twice and Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.
(Thanks, Ben and Fred.)
Unquote
“Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.” — Robert King Merton
Moderation
“At one time [Beau] Brummell ate no vegetables, and being asked by a lady if he had ever eaten any in his life said, ‘Yes, madam, I once ate a pea.'”
— William Hardcastle Browne, Witty Sayings by Witty People, 1878
Unquote
“A multitude of books confuses the mind. Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.” — Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
Unquote
“The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people.” — Dian Fossey