If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?

The illusion that we are separate from one another is an optical delusion of our consciousness.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.

The important thing is not to stop questioning.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.

Before God we are equally wise - and equally foolish.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

(from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1948) We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes, and feel with their own hearts.

The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking. The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.

The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

(on the death of another physicist) Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.

(April 16, 1953) Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

Paul Eldridge

Jealousy would be far less torturous if we understood that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits.

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

(from Daniel Deronda, bk. 8, ch. 58 (1876) - The Rector) The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way; and there are many victories worse than a defeat.

T. S. Eliot

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.

Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?
When the Church is no longer regarded, not even opposed,
And men have forgotten
All gods except Usury, Lust and Power.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the Knowledge we have lost in information?
The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change,
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

A heap of broken images,
Where the sun beats
And the dead tree gives no shelter,
the cricket no relief.
But there is a shadow under this great red rock
(come in under the shadow of this great red rock)
And I will show you something different from either
your shadow at morning striding before you,
or your shadow at noon-time rising to meet you.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

We shall never cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Linda Ellerbee

If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tieing a little noose around your neck?

Havelock Ellis

What we call "morals" is simply blind obedience to words of command.

The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago had they happened to be within reach of predatory human hands.

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.

The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.

Anwar El-Sadat

Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved by the very things they want to acquire.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Always do what you are afraid to do.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion, it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the world, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

When it is dark enough you can see the stars.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.

Go often to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

There is no knowledge that is not power.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

Children are all foreigners.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

All mankind love a lover.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

A day is a miniature eternity.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

A hero is no braver than anyone else; he is only brave five minutes longer.

I wish to say what I think & feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

What is the hardest task in the world? To Think.

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

English Professors, in foul moods :-)

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.

I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it.

English Proverb

Everyone must row with the oars he has.

Ennius (239 - 169 BCE)

Quem metuunt, oderunt. (They hate whom they fear.)

Epictetus (c. 60-120)

A ship ought not to be held by one anchor, nor life by a single hope.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

Only the educated are free.

Desiderius Erasmus

(from Adagia) In regione caecorum rex est luscus. [In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.]

When I get a little money, I buy books. And if there is any left over, I buy food.

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.

Paul Erdos

You know, all of these rules that may be completely correct for normal people make no sense for prodigies. To say that Bach should pay any attention to how he was socially adjusted is just a bad joke.

I said I'm two and a half billion years old because when I was young the earth was two billion years old and now it is four and a half billion years old so I must be two and a half billion years old.

Ludwig Erhard

A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece.

Lord Erskine

Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.

Susan Ertz

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Ethiopian Proverb

When spiderwebs unite, they can tie up a lion.

Euripides

(from Medea) A terrible anger, hard to cure, exists when those who have loved each other clash in strife.

(quoted by Marcus Aurelius, Med. VII:38) Vex not thy spirit at the course of things; They heed not thy vexation.

Man's best possession is a sympathetic wife.

Arthur Evans

Nothing, not love, not greed, not passion or hatred, is stronger than a writer's need to change another writer's copy.

Elliott "Eeyore" Evans

Boy, when you go to vote, make sure not to flip your coin up so high that the other people see it, and make sure you catch it and don't have to go crawling around on the floor looking for it while hundreds of waiting voters snicker or you'll be really embarassed.

Anonymous flyer being distributed at Exxon USA

Floggings will continue until morale improves.