Rainer Maria Rilke

A person isn't who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they're who they've been throughout your whole relationship. 

All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you. 

All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood. 

Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it.

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog. 

I have never been aware before how many faces there are. There are quantities of human beings, but there are many more faces, for each person has several. 

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other. 

I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty.

It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.

Stephen Wolfram

So the thing I realized rather gradually - I must say starting about 20 years ago now that we know about computers and things - there's a possibility of a more general basis for rules to describe nature.

The fact that the same symbolic programming primitives work for those as work for math kinds of things, I think, really validates the idea of symbolic programming being something pretty general. 

You kind of alluded to it in your introduction. I mean, for the last 300 or so years, the exact sciences have been dominated by what is really a good idea, which is the idea that one can describe the natural world using mathematical equations.

The most important precedents deal with the whole idea of symbolic programming - the notion of setting up symbolic expressions that can represent anything one wants, and then having functions that operate on both their structure and content. 

The thing that got me started on the science that I've been building now for about 20 years or so was the question of okay, if mathematical equations can't make progress in understanding complex phenomena in the natural world, how might we make progress?

There are a few very small incompatible changes - I really doubt most people will ever run into them.

Well, the first thing to say is that we've worked hard to maintain compatibility, so that any program written with an earlier version of Mathematica can run without change in 3.0, and any notebook can be converted.

Moses Maimonides

All this is applicable to the intellectual faculties of man. There is a considerable difference between one person and another as regards these faculties, as is well known to philosophers.

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. 

Be convinced that, if man were able to reach the end without preparatory studies, such studies would not be preparatory but tiresome and utterly superfluous. 

Consequently he who wishes to attain to human perfection, must therefore first study Logic, next the various branches of Mathematics in their proper order, then Physics, and lastly Metaphysics.

Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen.

Do not imagine that what we have said of the insufficiency of our understanding and of its limited extent is an assertion founded only on the Bible: for philosophers likewise assert the same, and perfectly understand it,- without having regard to any religion or opinion.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. 

He, however, who begins with Metaphysics, will not only become confused in matters of religion, but will fall into complete infidelity.

How individuals of the same species surpass each other in these sensations and in other bodily faculties is universally known, but there is a limit to them, and their power cannot extend to every distance or to every degree.

If a person studies too much and exhausts his reflective powers, he will be confused, and will not be able to apprehend even that which had been within the power of his apprehension. For the powers of the body are all alike in this respect.

Alistair Cooke

A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it. 

As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later. 

Canned music is like audible wallpaper. 

Cocktail music is accepted as audible wallpaper.

Curiosity endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in their own mode of life which springs from their cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will.

Curiosity is free-wheeling intelligence.

Hollywood grew to be the most flourishing factory of popular mythology since the Greeks. 

It's an acting job - acting natural. 

Man has an incurable habit of not fulfilling the prophecies of his fellow men. 

People in America, when listening to radio, like to lean forward. People in Britain like to lean back.

People, when they first come to America, whether as travelers or settlers, become aware of a new and agreeable feeling: that the whole country is their oyster.

The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own.

Benoit Mandelbrot

A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don't get something smooth, but irregularities at a smaller scale. 

Although computer memory is no longer expensive, there's always a finite size buffer somewhere. When a big piece of news arrives, everybody sends a message to everybody else, and the buffer fills. 

An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something. 

For much of my life there was no place where the things I wanted to investigate were of interest to anyone. 

I don't seek power and do not run around. 

I was in an industrial laboratory because academia found me unsuitable. 

Most were beginning to feel they had learned enough to last for the rest of their lives. They remained mathematicians, but largely went their own way. 

My fate has been that what I undertook was fully understood only after the fact. 

Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere. 

Now that I near 80, I realize with wistful pleasure that on many occasions I was 10, 20, 40, even 50 years ahead of my time. 

Order doesn't come by itself. 

Smooth shapes are very rare in the wild but extremely important in the ivory tower and the factory. 

The techniques I developed for studying turbulence, like weather, also apply to the stock market. 

There is a joke that your hammer will always find nails to hit. I find that perfectly acceptable. 

There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.  

Alexander Graham Bell

A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes of himself. 

America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men. 

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success. 

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus. 

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself. 

Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open. 

The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion. 

The nation that secures control of the air will ultimately control the world. 

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it. 

Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids. 

David Brin

Anyone who wants simple, pat stories should buy another author's product. The real universe ain't that way, and neither are my fictive ones. 

But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I'll bet you'll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science. 

But it is a delightful challenge to try to depict interesting aliens. 

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on. 

Fortunately, human beings are remarkably diverse models to work from. 

I find humans tremendously interesting. 

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring. 

I would normally never set out to write a trilogy. 

In the book, America had already been weakened by bio terror plagues before waves of selfish violence took down the rest. But the real enemy was the kind of male human being who nurses fantasies of violent glory at the expense of his fellow citizens. 

My education and background thoroughly inform my writing. 

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea. 

One of the rules I try to follow is that normal people are going to be involved even in heroic events. 

Only a knowledgeable, empowered and vocal citizenry can perform well in democracy. 

Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I've had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam... and I'm not happy to be right in all of those cases. 

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal. 

Igor Stravinsky

A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares. 

Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it. 

Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading. 

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune. 

I am an inventor of music. 

I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity. 

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge. 

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it. 

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust. 

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love? 

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being? 

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning. 

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal. 

Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn. 

Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time. 

Woodrow Wilson

A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits. 

A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt. 

A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible. 

Absolute identity with one's cause is the first and great condition of successful leadership. 

America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us. 

America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses. 

America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal - to discover and maintain liberty among men. 

As compared with the college politician, the real article seems like an amateur. 

At every crisis in one's life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving. 

By 'radical,' I understand one who goes too far; by 'conservative,' one who does not go far enough; by 'reactionary,' one who won't go at all. 

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness. 

Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles. 

Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is growing or swelling. 

Generally young men are regarded as radicals. This is a popular misconception. The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life. 

Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose. 

He is not a true man of the world who knows only the present fashions of it. 

I am not sure that it is of the first importance that you should be happy. Many an unhappy man has been of deep service to himself and to the world. 

Fred Allen

A committee is a group of the unprepared, appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary. 

A conference is a gathering of people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done. 

A gentleman is any man who wouldn't hit a woman with his hat on. 

A telescope will magnify a star a thousand times, but a good press agent can do even better. 

All I know about humor is that I don't know anything about it. 

An actor's popularity is fleeting. His success has the life expectancy of a small boy who is about to look into a gas tank with a lighted match. 

An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission. 

During the Samuel Johnson days they had big men enjoying small talk; today we have small men enjoying big talk. 

Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent. 

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted. 

Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style; it will just look ridiculous year after year. 

Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars. 

I always have trouble remembering three things: faces, names, and - I can't remember what the third thing is