"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
— Albert Einstein

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
— Groucho Marx (The Essential Groucho)

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."
— William Shakespeare (As You Like It)

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
— Albert Einstein

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
— Albert Einstein

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
— Douglas Adams

"Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler."
— Albert Einstein

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
— Isaac Asimov

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but 'That's funny...'"
— Isaac Asimov

"The young specialist in English Lit, ... lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is wrong.

... My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.""
— Isaac Asimov

"Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own. "
— Bertrand Russell (What I Believe)

"The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death."
— Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan)

"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science."
— Edwin Hubble

"We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are."
— Stephen Jay Gould (The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History)

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does."
— Richard P. Feynman (QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter)

"Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of Evolution"
— T.G. Dobzhansky

"For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. "
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

"Science is the search for the truth--it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent, to do harm to others. We need to have the spirit of science in international affairs, to make the conduct of international affairs the effort to find the right solution, the just solution of international problems, and not an effort by each nation to get the better of other nations, to do harm to them when it is possible. I believe in morality, in justice, in humanitarianism.
"
— Linus Pauling (Linus Pauling On Peace - A Scientist Speaks Out on Humanism and World Survival)

"Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue."
— Robert King Merton (Social Theory and Social Structure)

"Science without conscience is the soul's perdition."
— François Rabelais (Pantagruel)

"If biologists have ignored self-organization, it is not because self-ordering is not pervasive and profound. It is because we biologists have yet to understand how to think about systems governed simultaneously by two sources of order, Yet who seeing the snowflake, who seeing simple lipid molecules cast adrift in water forming themselves into cell-like hollow lipid vesicles, who seeing the potential for the crystallization of life in swarms of reacting molecules, who seeing the stunning order for free in networks linking tens upon tens of thousands of variables, can fail to entertain a central thought: if ever we are to attain a final theory in biology, we will surely, surely have to understand the commingling of self-organization and selection. We will have to see that we are the natural expressions of a deeper order. Ultimately, we will discover in our creation myth that we are expected after all."
— Stuart Kauffman

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
— Isaac Asimov

"If I am right, then (religious fundamentalists) will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If they are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites."
— Isaac Asimov

"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right."
— Isaac Asimov

"Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."
— Isaac Asimov

"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."
— Isaac Asimov

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."
— Isaac Asimov

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. "
— Isaac Asimov

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
— Isaac Asimov

"I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending."
— Isaac Asimov

"Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me what makes skies so blue,
And I'll tell you why I love you.

Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine,
Tropisms make the ivy twine,
Raleigh scattering make skies so blue,
Testicular hormones are why I love you. "
— Isaac Asimov

"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
— Isaac Asimov

"They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions."
— Isaac Asimov (Pebble in the Sky)

"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today."
— Isaac Asimov

"Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly."
— Isaac Asimov

"Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
"Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be." "
— Isaac Asimov

"It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?"
— Isaac Asimov (I, Robot)

"All evil is good become cancerous."
— Isaac Asimov

"But life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far and superior to that of muscle and sinew. Let me tell you, if you don't know it from your own experience, that reading a good book, losing yourself in the interest of words and thoughts, is for some people (me, for instance) an incredible intensity of happiness."
— Isaac Asimov (I, Asimov: A Memoir)

"The Earth should not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own "national security" to be paramount above all other consideration.

I am all for cultural diversity and would be willing to see each recognizable group value its cultural heritage. I am a New York patriot, for instance, and if I lived in Los Angeles, I would love to get together with other New York expatriates and sing "Give My Regards to Broadway."

This sort of thing, however, should remain cultural and benign. I'm against it if it means that each group despises others and lusts to wipe them out. I'm against arming each little self-defined group with weapons with which to enforce its own prides and prejudices.

The Earth faces environmental problems right now that threaten the imminent destruction of civilization and the end of the planet as a livable world. Humanity cannot afford to waste its financial and emotional resources on endless, meaningless quarrels between each group and all others. there must be a sense of globalism in which the world unites to solve the real problems that face all groups alike.

Can that be done? The question is equivalent to: Can humanity survive?

I am not a Zionist, then, because I don't believe in nations, and because Zionism merely sets up one more nation to trouble the world. It sets up one more nation to have "rights" and "demands" and "national security" and to feel it must guard itself against its neighbors.

There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity. "
— Isaac Asimov (I, Asimov: A Memoir)

"Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young."
— Isaac Asimov (Pebble in the Sky)

"And [Asimov]'ll sign anything, hardbacks, softbacks, other people's books, scraps of paper. Inevitably someone handed him a blank check on the occasion when I was there, and he signed that without as much as a waver to his smile — except that he signed: 'Harlan Ellison.'"
— Isaac Asimov (Murder at the ABA)

"Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction--its essence--has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."
— Isaac Asimov