Hershel > Hershel's Quotes

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Books are immortal sons defying their sires.”
― Plato

“The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.”
― Plato, The Republic

“When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“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

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself.”
― Richard Francis Burton, The Book of a Thousand Nights and One Night: 17 Volumes, Complete

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“Even a fool learns something once it hits him.”
― Homer, Iliad

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”
― Alan Watts

“Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering—this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone. But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

“I have never been convinced there's anything inherently wrong in having fun. ”
― George Plimpton

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”
― Joseph Campbell

“What a strange thing!
to be alive
beneath cherry blossoms.”
― Kobayashi Issa, Poems

“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”
― Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.”
― Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“After listening to Rick Santorum, I'm now for late-term abortions (say up to age 53).”
― Quentin R. Bufogle

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter”
― John Keats, Ode On A Grecian Urn And Other Poems

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss

“No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.”
― Don DeLillo, White Noise

“To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?”
― Christopher Hitchens, Mortality

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”
― Henry Miller, The Books in My Life