Jonathan Swift
- Gulliver's Travels
Judges... are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing anything unbecoming their nature in office.
Jonathan Swift
- Gulliver's Travels (Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 6)
And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Jonathan Swift
- Gulliver's Travels
I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.
Albert Einstein
Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting points and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.
Dino Buzzati
- The Falling Girl
In the meantime, however, the sun had plunged into the sea; one could see it disappear, transformed into a shimmering reddish mushroom. As a result, it no longer emitted its vivifying rays to light up the girl's dress and make her a seductive comet. It was a good thing that the windows and terraces of the skyscraper were almost all illuminated and the bright reflections completely gilded her as she gradually passed by.
Dino Buzzati
- The Falling Girl
The beautiful people, then, were interested in her and that filled her with satisfaction. She felt fascinating, stylish. On the flower-filled terraces, amid the bustle of waiters in white and the bursts of exotic songs, there was talk for a few minutes perhaps less, of the young woman who was passing by (from top to bottom, on a vertical course). Some thought her pretty, others thought her so-so, everyone found her interesting.
Dino Buzzati
- The Falling Girl
Seeing these things, Marta hopelessly leaned out over the railing and let herself go. She felt as if she were hovering in the air, but she was falling. Given the extraordinary height of the skyscraper, the streets and squares down at the bottom were very far away. Who knows how long it would take her to get there. Yet the girl was falling.
Douglas Adams
- Mostly Harmless
The thing they wouldn't be expecting him to do was to be there in the first place. Only an absolute idiot would be sitting where he was, so he was winning already. A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Albert Einstein
- The World as I See It
It is the duty of every man of good will to strive steadfastly in his own little world to make this teaching of pure humanity a living force, so far as he can. If he makes an honest attempt in this direction without being crushed and trampled underfoot by his contemporaries, he may consider himself and the community to which he belongs lucky.
Albert Einstein
- The World as I See It
The over-estimation of money is still greater in this country than in Europe, but appears to me to be on the decrease. It is at last beginning to be realized that great wealth is not necessary for a happy and satisfactory life.
Albert Einstein
- The World as I See It
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are capable of it.
Albert Einstein
- The World as I See It
I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure characters is the only thing that can produce fine ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?
R.K. Sachs and H. Wu
- General Relativity for Mathematicians
No well-defined current physical theory claims to model all nature; each intentionally neglects some effects. Roughly, general relativity is a model of nature, especially of gravity, that neglects quantum effect. Its central assumption is that space, time, and gravity are all aspects of a single entity, called spacetime, which is modelled by a 4-dimensional Lorentzian manifold. It analyzes spacetime, electromagnetism, matter and their mutual influences.
Brian Reid
- SCRIBE Introductory User's Manual
Both the Stanford and DEC uses of the ASCII control characters are in violation of the USA Standard Code, but no Federal Marshal is likely to come running out and arrest people who type control-T to their computers.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
- The School for Scandal (1777)
I think you will like them, when you shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin. 'Fore Gad they will be the most elegant things of their kind!'
Goethe
- Maxims and Reflexions (1829)
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whenever you say something to them, they translate it into their own language, and at once it is something entirely different.
Matthew Raper
- Philosophical Transactions (1760)
The methods that have hitherto been taken to discover the measure of the Roman foot, will, upon examination, be found so unsatisfactory, that it is no wonder the learned are not yet agreed on that point... 9 London inches are equal to 8.447 Paris inches.
Leonard Bacon
- Sophia Trenton
Technique! The very word is like the shriek of outraged Art. It is the idiot name given to effort by those who are too weak, too weary, or too dull to play the game.
Izy Vaisman
- Cohomology and Differential Forms
The objects with which we usually operate in mathematics are called classes; they arise by abstraction from the intuitive notion of a collection of things. This intuitive image is unsatisfactory for mathematical operations because it gives rise to contradictions, so we must consider classes as defined by a determined system of axioms. We consider here the same system of axioms as in the book Universal Algebra, by P. M. Cohn.
