Quotes

If you believe that there are atoms, it is inconsistent to believe in a god. If you don't believe that there are atoms, you are ignorant.
--- Tom Schneider, 2004 June 22

Religion hobbles the mind.
--- Tom Schneider, 2004 June 22

From my personal experience, turn the other cheek is often neglected by religious people when their beliefs are demonstrated to have no basis.
--- Tom Schneider, 2004 July 4

Math is trivial after you get it and impossible before that.
--- Tom Schneider, 2011 Oct 22

Watching science progress is like following a thousand mystery and thriller novels simultaneously.
--- Tom Schneider 2014 oct 10

The best way to do theory is to think hard about the problem and to saturate oneself in it. Then go and do something else. If there is a solution it will emerge one day, maybe years later while one is relaxing.
--- Tom Schneider 2014oct 12 10:08 am

When your opponents decide
to go down the wrong path
leading to their demise
are you obliged to tell them?
--- Tom Schneider 2015/02/01_13:05:08

Recursive Murphy's Law:
If Murphy's Law can go wrong it will.
--- Tom Schneider 2022/03/22_21:13:13

Responsibility:
Everyone says that having power is a great responsibility. This is a lot of bunk. Responsibility is when someone can blame you if something goes wrong. When you have power you are surrounded by people whose job it is to take the blame for your mistakes. If they're smart, that is.
-- Cerebus, "On Governing"
She was only a moonshiner's daughter, but I love her still.
-- Unix fortune
A scholars ink lasts longer than a martyrs blood.
--- Prophet Muhammad
google search
They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.
They are fools that think otherwise. No great effort was ever bought. No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was ever raised into being for payment of any kind. No parthenon, no Thermopylae was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone. The payment for doing these things was itself the doing of them.
To wield onself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food spread only for demons or for gods."
-- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"
(unix fortune)
To piss off an atheist, you tell them a lie.
To piss off a Christian, you tell them the truth.
-- Jack Ketch 2014 feb 21 (original link is broken) on youtube
"Being liberal means being open to new evidence." -- Congressman George Miller
2014 Apr 30 interview, similar quote video at 00:29:16, starting a few seconds early. (2014 Apr 30)
(google: george miller liberal new evidence)
Life isn't fair, but it's still good. Life is too short-- enjoy it. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present and the future. It's OK to let your children see you cry. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about. If a relationship has to be secret, you shouldn't be in it. Take a deep breath, it calms the mind. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. It's never too late to be happy. But it's all up to you and no one else. When it comes time to go after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer. Burn the nice candles, use the nice sheets, wear the nice lingerie, wear the nice clothes. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special. Over prepare, then go with the flow. No one is in charge of your happiness but you. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: 'In five years will this matter?' Always choose life. Forgive but don't forget. Time heals almost everything. Give time, time. However good or bad a situation is, it will change. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved. If we all threw our problems in a pile and we saw everyone else's, we'd grab our's back. Envy is a waste of time. Accept what you already have, not what you need. Yield. Friends are the family we choose. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.
-- Some google sleuthing revealed the author of these tidbits to be Regina Brett: www.reginabrett.com
To those who have lost a loved one in the service of our nation, I recall a famous headstone in Ireland. And the headstone reads as follows, "Death leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal."
-- Vice President Joe Biden, Memorial Day May 31, 2010, Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05
"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."
-- Neil Gaiman http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/64407-may-your-coming-year-be-filled-with-magic-and-dreams
Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.
-- Louis Brandeis http://software.clapper.org/fortune/
We do not always
dance because
we are happy,
but we dance and
cannot help but
become happy.
Never give a sword
to a man
who can't dance
--Confucius
The Analects

Ginsberg's Theorem:
	1. You can't win.
	2. You can't break even.
	3. You can't even quit the game.

Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:

	Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
	meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
	Theorem.  To wit:

	1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
	2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
	3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.

FOR SALE:
	Parachute.  Used once.
	Never opened.  Slightly Stained.

As never before the young soldier of twenty two now realized that if he was ever to find truth he must first reject absolutely all ideas acquired from others and rely upon the patient questioning of his own mortal mind to show him the way. All the knowledge he had received from authority must be cast aside; the whole fabric of his inherited moral and intellectual ideas must be destroyed, to be refashioned more enduringly by the primitive, earthy strength of human reason alone.
--- Men of mathematics by E. T. Bell, Chapter 3: Gentleman, Soldier, and Mathematician - Descartes (1596-1650), page 40
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
--- Christopher Hitchens.
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' "
--- Issac Asimov

"A joke told when I was a child (a while ago...): Elephants are masters at camouflage, they like to paint the bottoms of their feet and hide in mustard jars feet up. No elephant has ever been seen in a mustard jar, you say? Well, there you have it."
-- Bo Dan (comment on Sagan video)

There is no real path to unity and healing that doesn't pass through the gate of justice and accountability.
-- Kai Hagen January 9 at 8:14 PM
There's a kind of indignation I know well, when someone feels that the wrong done them has been unrecognized, and a kind of trauma that makes the sufferer into a compulsive storyteller of an unresolved story.
-- Rebecca Solnit
The night hath come; it is no longer day?
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite
Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear; ...
But other something, would we but begin;
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

-- An excerpt from H. W. Longfellow's Marituri Salutamus
Of course, faced with the task of constructing numbers
such as the cube root of 2 and root pi,
it's natural to just stare helplessly into space,
which is pretty much all that happened
for 2,000 years.
-- Mathologer 2019 Jun 29
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold. I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case. Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to the point where it would not run at all.
-- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black Holes and the Fate of Stars"
-- Unix fortune
... 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.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"
-- Unix fortune
A magnetar's magnetic field can be so strong that approaching within 1,000 kilometers of one would disrupt your body's atomic nuclei and electrons, causing you to effectively dissolve.
-- Adam Mann, November 22, 2021, Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts Are Finally Coming into Focus
"ideas outlive all earthly things"
--- James A. Garfield 1880s, Speech to the 'Boys in Blue' (1880)
Source
Speech of Gen. Jas. A. Garfield delivered to the "boys in blue." New York, August 6, 1880.
Essay by Heather Cox Richardson
Almost everybody can stay excited for 2 or 3 months. A few people can stay excited for 2 or 3 years. But a winner will stay excited for 30 years or however long it takes to win.
-- Insurance executive and entrepreneur Art Williams on motivation
Source: "Just Do It"
google: Art Williams "Just Do It"
"To think out of the box, you have to know what's in the box."
--- Michael Shermer
The Michael Shermer Show # 294 Aug 23, 2022
To be scientifically literate is to empower yourself to know when someone else is full of shit.
--- Neil deGrasse Tyson
twitter 12:00 PM May 27, 2017
I wish for once I could just spiral into control
--- Kelly Brinton Nelson
facebook September 21 at 10:36 PM (The related quotes are hilarious!!)
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
--- Thomas Jefferson
brainyquote source: Elon Musk and Sandy Munro discuss the Cybertruck!
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child-our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
goodreads.
The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.
-- T. H. White, "The Once and Future King"
goodreads.
An old man meets a young man who asks:
"Do you remember me?"
And the old man says no. Then the young man tells him he was his student, And the teacher asks:
"What do you do, what do you do in life?"
The young man answers:
"Well, I became a teacher."
"ah, how good, like me?" Asks the old man.
"Well, yes. In fact, I became a teacher because you inspired me to be like you."
The old man, curious, asks the young man at what time he decided to become a teacher. And the young man tells him the following story:
"One day, a friend of mine, also a student, came in with a nice new watch, and I decided I wanted it.
I stole it, I took it out of his pocket.
Shortly after, my friend noticed the his watch was missing and immediately complained to our teacher, who was you.
Then you addressed the class saying, `This student's watch was stolen during classes today. Whoever stole it, please return it.'
I didn't give it back because I didn't want to.
You closed the door and told us all to stand up and form a circle.
You were going to search our pockets one by one until the watch was found.
However, you told us to close our eyes, because you would only look for his watch if we all had our eyes closed.
We did as instructed.
You went from pocket to pocket, and when you went through my pocket, you found the watch and took it. You kept searching everyone's pockets, and when you were done you said `open your eyes. We have the watch.'
You didn't tell on me and you never mentioned the episode. You never said who stole the watch either. That day you saved my dignity forever. It was the most shameful day of my life.
But this is also the day I decided not to become a thief, a bad person, etc. You never said anything, nor did you even scold me or take me aside to give me a moral lesson.
I received your message clearly.
Thanks to you, I understood what a real educator needs to do.
Do you remember this episode, professor?
The old professor answered, `Yes, I remember the situation with the stolen watch, which I was looking for in everyone's pocket. I didn't remember you, because I also closed my eyes while looking.'
This is the essence of teaching:
If to correct you must humiliate; you don't know how to teach."
Amazing.
Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you come back.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
"To experience time travel, read. To achieve immortality, write."
--- James clear james@jamesclear.com
https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/august-15-2024
Chinese writer and literary critic Lu Xun on the power of hope:

"Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence."

Source: Epigrams of Lusin (hat tip to Dylan O'Sullivan)
--- James clear james@jamesclear.com
https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/September-19-2024

Tom Schneider's Home Page
origin: 2004 Jun 22
updated: 2024 Sep 19