Chris Aldrich

“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question -- such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? -- not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.”
― C.P. Snow

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.”
― Jared Diamond, Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
― Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature