“Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: ‘My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.’ This stranger is a theologian.” — Diderot
Quotations
Hearsay
“Lord Dawson was not a good doctor. King George V himself told me that he would never have died had he had another doctor.” — Margot Asquith, to the young Lord David Cecil
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“Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.” — Quintilian
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“Nearly every example of faulty reasoning that has been published is accompanied by the phrase ‘of course’ or its equivalent.” — Donald E. Knuth
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“A highbrow is a person educated beyond his intelligence.” — Brander Matthews
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“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” — Bertrand Russell
“There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.” — George Bernard Shaw
“Leave something to wish for, so as not to be miserable from very happiness.” — Baltasar Gracián
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“How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?” — Albert Einstein
“The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.” — Eugene Wigner
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“Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented.” — André Gide
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“The eyes have one language everywhere.” — George Herbert
Misc
- Kurt Vonnegut managed the country’s first Saab dealership.
- Max Born is Olivia Newton-John’s grandfather.
- 19683 = 1 × (9 – 6)8 × 3
- Before the advent of European settlers, it’s believed that no Native American had blood type B.
- “Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.” — Edith Sitwell
The first recorded performance of Hamlet took place at sea, aboard the East India ship Red Dragon off the coast of Africa in 1607. Capt. William Keeling’s diary entry for Sept. 5 reads: “I sent the interpreter according to his desier abord the Hector whear he brooke fast and after came abord me wher we gave the tragedie of Hamlett.”