"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"
-Isaac Asimov

" My approach to understanding the full implications of Gödel's work is mathematically analogous to the ideas of thermodynamics and Boltzmann and statistical mechanics. You might say, not completely seriously, that what I'm proposing is 'thermodynamical epistemology'!"
- G. Chaitin

"Those who cannot cope with mathematics are at best, tolerable sub-humans who have learned to bathe, wear shoes and not make messes in the house."
- Robert Heinlein

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."

"I know it is a weakness of human nature to become emotionally invested in inconsequential tribal spats, but people who want to be transhumanists need to be able to get past that almost as a prerequisite. In fact, a good portion of the transhumanist ideals are all about shedding this behavior."
- J. Andrew Rogers

"A lady said, 'What's your solution?'
I said, 'There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.'
She said, 'The people demand solutions!'
- Thomas Sowell

"I am committed to the notion that both individual fulfillment and the ecological balance of life on this planet are best served by dying when our inherent biology decrees that we do. I am equally committed to making that age as close to our biologically probable maximum of approximately 120 years as modern biomedicine can achieve, and also to efforts at decreasing and compressing the years of morbidity and disabilities now attendant on extreme old age."
- Sherwin Nuland

"Pleasure, love and grace are not man's to control. They come from identifying with life, and rejoicing in its splendor, vitality, and beauty. Although pleasure, love and grace are ephemeral, trust them and follow them, for they contain the meaning of life." – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
- Isaac Asimov

It took a million years to move from counting pebbles to the elaborations of quantum mechanics. Certainly this was an arduous migration of the multitude -- not a private party of physicists, but the Long March of the entire human race.
- Anonymous

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
- Sir Winston Churchill

There is, to be sure, a genuine problem in the phenomenon of quantum measurement, but I will not discuss it here. It concerns introspective systems, where subject = object so that the basic conception of a single subject observing an ensemble of objects must be modified.
- David Finkelstein

It is time we steered by the stars, not by the lights of each passing ship.
- General Omar Bradley

Do not go gently into that good night.
Old age should burn and rage at the close of day.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas

"...one should bear in mind that there is nothing more difficult to execute, nor more dubious of success, nor more dangerous to administer than to introduce a new system of things: for he who introduces it has all those who profit from the old system as his enemies, and he has only lukewarm allies in all those who might profit from the new system. This lukewarmness partly stems from fear of their adversaries, who have the law on their side, and partly from the skepticism of men who do not truly believe in new things unless they have actually had personal experience of them. Therefore, it happens that whenever those who are enemies have the chance to attack, they do so in a partisan manner, and those others defend hesitantly ..."
- Niccolo Machiavelli