Philip K. Dick:
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go
away.
Albert Einstein:
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein:
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own
reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates
the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of
reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of
this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
Richard Feynman:
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
Marvin The Paranoid Android:
Oh dear, I think you'll find reality's on the blink again.
Friedrich Nietzsche:
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with
reality at any point.
Joseph Chilton Pearce:
We are shaped by each other. We adjust not to the reality of a world,
but to the reality of other thinkers.
Siddartha, "Lord of Light" by Roger Zelazny:
...'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not
matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and
remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his
fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the
world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon
reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles
as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming.
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ON TRUTH
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:
Once you discard the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable,
must be the truth.
Oscar Wilde:
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
The "Xlib Programming Manual":
The truth of the matter is that window management under X is not yet
well understood.
George Carlin:
Take Idaho's license plates - they say 'Famous Potatoes.' Then there's
New Hampshire - their license plates say 'Live Free ... or DIE!!' I
don't know, I think that somewhere between 'Famous Potatoes' and 'Live
Free or Die' the truth lies. And I think it's closer to 'Famous
Potatoes.'
Albert Einstein:
The right to search for the truth implies also a duty; one must not
conceal any part of what one has recognized to be the truth.
Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988):
The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth." I usually pick one
small topic like this to give a lecture on. Poets say science takes
away from the beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms. Nothing is
"mere." I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But
do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my
imagination -- stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch
one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern -- of which I am a part --
perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is
belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing
all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all
together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?* It does
not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more
marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do
the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can
speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense
spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism, Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 12, pg. 46:
...Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that
as an inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most
notably I have ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand
years old. Well, I haven't ignored it; I considered the purported
evidence and *then* rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a
difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice
is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is
making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that
you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not
terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also.
But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the
evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
Niels Bohr:
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the
opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Mark Twain:
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
John Locke:
Till a man can judge whether they be truths or not, his understanding
is but little improved, and thus men of much reading, though greatly
learned, but may be little knowing.
Voltaire:
Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to
be read.
Frederick The Great:
The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is
to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices.
Henry David Thoreau:
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.
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ON STAR TREK
-------------------------------------------------------------
TV Guide, describing the Star Trek episode "Amok Time":
Mr. Spock succumbs to a powerful mating urge and nearly kills Captain
Kirk.
William Shatner as Kirk, in "Star Trek IV:The Voyage:
I'm from Iowa, I only work in space.
Star Trek, the Next Generation:
It's hard to work in groups when you're omnipotent. -- Q.
Star Trek, the Next Generation, "Deja Q":
This is getting on my nerves, now that I have them. -- Q.
Star Trek:
Captain Kirk speaks figuratively, and with undue emotion, but what he
says is essentially correct, and I do, in fact, agree with it. -- Mr.
Spock
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* Hakeeb A. Nandalal "What does God want *
* nanco@trinidad.net with a spaceship?" *
* *
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