Quotations


It's a fine line between a long academic lecture and a hostage situation.

Some people look for knowledge, most only look for comfort.

When I die, I hope it will be during a committee meeting because then the transition will be minimal. [Emil Wolf]

People who object to modern medicine as "unnatural" don't fully grasp what "natural" means: two teeth left at age twenty five, and dead at thirty.

Some students come to university to drink from the Fountain of Knowledge.
Some come to gargle.

The three main forces that shape our world are religion, greed and technology.

Civil equality is all that a reasonable man can claim. Absolute equality is a chimera; for it to exist there would have to be absolute equality
in intelligence, virtue, physical strength and fortune for all men. [Boissy d'Anglas]

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. [Jonathan Swift]

It is striking how many politiciancs talk about "equal opportunities", when in fact what they mean is equal outcomes.

How I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics. [Anonymous mnemonic for remembering the digits of pi: How = 3, I = 1, need = 4, etc.]

Yes, every one belongs to every one else. [Lenina, in Huxley's novel Brave New World]

To those looking for a cause: Peace. Food. No more people than the earth can take. That is the cause. [C.P. Snow]

Nothing is more unevenly distributed than wealth, health and intelligence.

Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people. [Socrates]

A bullshit job is a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case. [David Graeber, who claims that in the West more than 30 percent of workers agree that their job falls into this category.]

The greatest impediment to insight is ideology.

Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger. [Abbie Hoffman?]

You can't be everything to everybody.

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. [John Kenneth Galbraith]



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