"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"
— Stephen W. Hawking (A Brief History of Time)

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."
— Stephen W. Hawking

"The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope."
— Stephen W. Hawking

"There is a philosophy that says that if something is unobservable -- unobservable in principle -- it is not part of science. If there is no way to falsify or confirm a hypothesis, it belongs to the realm of metaphysical speculation, together with astrology and spiritualism. By that standard, most of the universe has no scientific reality -- it's just a figment of our imaginations."
— Leonard Susskind (The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics)

"God abhors a naked singularity."
— Stephen W. Hawking (A Brief History of Time)

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
— Ernest Hemingway

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Courage is grace under pressure."
— Ernest Hemingway

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."
— Ernest Hemingway

"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)

"Never confuse movement with action."
— Ernest Hemingway

"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Isn't it pretty to think so."
— Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises)

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."
— Ernest Hemingway

"The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it."
— Ernest Hemingway

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."
— Ernest Hemingway

"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)

"As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?""
— Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises)

"Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you."
— Ernest Hemingway

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)

"When you start to live outside yourself, it's all dangerous."
— Ernest Hemingway (The Garden of Eden)

"Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don't cheat with it."
— Ernest Hemingway

"But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated. "
— Ernest Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea)

"His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)

"You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)

"But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)

"I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me."
— Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)

"Ernest Hemingway once remarked “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.” I agree with the second part. "
— Film Seven

"[...] the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany?"
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."
— Jack Kerouac

"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."
— Jack Kerouac

"Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry."
— Jack Kerouac

"Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream"
— Jack Kerouac

"There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road: The Original Scroll)

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?- it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and looked to the sky and really meant it. "I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other." To the children and the innocent it's all the same."
— Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time."
— Jack Kerouac

"What's in store for me in the direction I don't take?"
— Jack Kerouac

"Will you love me in December as you do in May?"
— Jack Kerouac (The Town and the City)

"It all ends in tears anyway."
— Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)

"But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?"
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; NY gets god-awful cold in the winter but there's a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"As we crossed the Colorado-Utah border I saw God in the sky in the form of huge gold sunburning clouds above the desert that seemed to point a finger at me and say, "Pass here and go on, you're on the road to heaven."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life."
— Jack Kerouac