More Themes 5

  • “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.” – Richard Feynman
  • “If you want something said, ask a man … if you want something done, ask a woman.”
    – Margaret Thatcher (1923-2013)
  • “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
    – Margaret Thatcher (1923-2013)
  • The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.
    – paraphrased from a statement by Margaret Thatcher,
    in a television interview on February 5, 1976.
  • “Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominate, and then it seeks to silence good.” – Archibishop Chaput of Philadelphia
  • A job not worth doing is not worth doing well.
  • You cannot unsay an unkind word.
  • “The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.”
    – John Tukey
  • “Are the effects of A and B different? They are always different – for some decimal place.”
    – John Tukey
  • Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.
    – Mark Twain
  • “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
    – Mark Twain
  • There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact – Sherlock Holmes (The Boscombe Valley Mystery)
  • “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” -John F. Kennedy
  • “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” – James Madison, 4th president of US (1751-1836) in a speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788
  • “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” – Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939
  • “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned” — Richard Feynman
  • “Job creation and destruction are relentless. The small difference between the two is what we call prosperity.” – H.W. Jenkins, Jr., WSJ, 14 Jan. 2012.
  • In earlier times, they had no statistics, and so they had to fall back on lies. – unknown
  • For many people knowledge has the remarkable power of producing confidence instead of measureable aptitude. – Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Black Swan (2007)
  • A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save several hours in the library. – unknown
  • “Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?” – Charlie McCarthy (Edgar Bergen, 1903 – 1978)
  • You can pretend to be serious; you can’t pretend to be witty. – Sacha Guitry (1885-1957) French film actor, director, screenwriter and playwright
  • The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny …” – Isaac Asimov
  • Often the choice is not between what you want and what you don’t want. It’s between what you don’t want and what you REALLY don’t want.
  • There is none so blind as he who will not see. – unknown