Ginsberg's Theorem
1) You can't win.
2) You can't break
even.
3) You can't even quit the game.
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
John, aged 7
A University without students is like an ointment without a fly.
Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Max Planck, 1949
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
A scientist can discover a new star, but he cannot make one. He would have to ask an engineer to do that.
Gordon L. Glegg, American Engineer, 1969
Alarmists can be self-promoting pains, and they are often wrong. So ignore them. How bad could life be on an Earth slow-cooking in a sauce of melted icebergs, populated by genetic experiments gone wild and fated to an eternity of Windows 95?
Michael Wines, New York Times 29-Dec-96
Young's Law
All great discoveries are made by mistake.
Corollary:
the greater the funding, the longer it takes to make the
mistake.
Any inanimate object, regardless of its composition or configuration, may be expected to perform at any time in a totally unexpected manner for reasons that are either totally obscure or completely mysterious.
Dr. Fyodor Flap
Clarke's Third Law
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Alan Braggins
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life --- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
Matt Cartmill
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
Belief is no substitute for arithmetic.
Henry Spencer
Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He'd rather not sign His own name.
Anatole France
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.
Albert Einstein
Don't bother me, I'm busy conserving energy, momentum, and angular momentum.
Entropy isn't what it used to be.
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls must dive below.
John Dryden
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
Evolution is cleverer than you are.
Francis Crick
Figures won't lie, but liars will figure.
General Charles H. Grosvenor
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
Richard Feynman
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert.
Arthur C. Clarke
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamposts --- for support rather than illumination.
Andrew Lang
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895
Heisenberg might have slept here.
First Law of Laboratory Work
Hot glass looks exactly the same as cold glass.
I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong.
Richard Feynman
I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.
Albert Einstein
If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this.
Spencer Silver on his work that led to the unique 'yellow sticky' adhesive
If I have been given to see further than other men, it is because I have stood on the faces of midgets.
Astrel Joie
If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing well.
Finagle's First Law
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
Albert Einstein
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Albert Einstein
If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself.
Albert Einstein
If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.
Ronald Coase
If you want to know what the process is doing, don't ask people, ask the process.
W. Purcell
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein
Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world.
Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
James Thurber
It is not a simple life to be a single cell, although I have no right to say so, having been a single cell so long ago myself that I have no memory at all of that stage of my life.
Lewis Thomas
It is one Thing, to show a Man that he is in an Error, and another, to put him in possession of Truth.
John Locke
It was mentioned on CNN that the new prime number discovered recently is four times bigger than the previous record.
John Blasik
Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.
B.L.Whorf
Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts.
Lotteries are taxes on people who can't do math.
Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.
Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872.
Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.
Spinoza
Math was always my bad subject. I couldn't convince my teachers that many of my answers were meant ironically.
Calvin Trillin
My work has always tried to unite the true with the beautiful, and when I had to choose one or the other I usually chose the beautiful.
Hermann Weyl
Fett's Law of the Laboratory
Never replicate a successful experiment.
Finagle's Second Law
No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
No one WANTS to learn from mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art.
Henry Petroski
Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.
Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002)
Observation always involves theory.
Edwin Hubble
On the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth.
Presidential candidate George W. Bush
ENGINEERING TERMINOLOGY
PHRASE: "A number of different approaches are being
tried."
TRANSLATION: "We don't know where we're
going, but we're moving."
ENGINEERING TERMINOLOGY
PHRASE: "An extensive report is being prepared on a fresh
approach to the problem."
TRANSLATION: "We just
hired three guys...We'll let them kick it around for a
while."
ENGINEERING TERMINOLOGY
PHRASE: "Developed after years of intensive
research."
TRANSLATION: "It was discovered by
accident."
ENGINEERING TERMINOLOGY
PHRASE: "Modifications are underway to correct certain
minor difficulties."
TRANSLATION: "We threw the
whole thing out and are starting from scratch."
ENGINEERING TERMINOLOGY
PHRASE: "Preliminary operational tests were
inconclusive."
TRANSLATION: "The darn thing
blew up when we threw the switch."
ENGINEERING TERMINOLOGY
PHRASE: "Test results were extremely
gratifying."
TRANSLATION: "It works, and boy
are we surprised!"
ENGINEERING TERMINOLOGY
PHRASE: "The design will be finalized in the next
reporting period."
TRANSLATION: "We haven't
started this job yet, but we've got to say something."
ENGINEERING TERMINOLOGY
PHRASE: "The entire concept is
unworkable."
TRANSLATION: "The only guy who
understood the thing just quit."
ENGINEERING TERMINOLOGY
PHRASE: "We need close project
coordination."
TRANSLATION: "We should have
asked someone else."
ALTERNATE TRANSLATION:
"Let's spread the responsibility for this."
People will inevitably associate me with my father, but I would not have anyone believe that I am trading on the name Edison. I would rather have you know me merely as the result of one of my father's earlier experiments.
Charles Edison (son of the inventor), during his campaign for governor of New Jersey in 1940
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Richard Feynman
FAA-Annotated `High Flight'
Pilots are requested to ensure that all surly bonds are slipped before attempting taxi or take-off.
Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work, 1921
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a
lightbulb?
A: One, who gives it to six Californians,
thereby reducing it to an earlier riddle.
Q: What do you get if you cross an elephant with a
mountain climber?
A: You can't do that. A mountain
climber is a scalar.
Q: What do you get if you cross an elephant with a
zebra?
A: Elephant zebra sin theta.
Q: What does a mathematician do when he's
constipated?
A: He works it out with a pencil.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the Moebius
strip?
A: To get to the other ... er, um ...
Q: Why is it that the more accuracy you demand from an
interpolation function, the more expensive it becomes to
compute?
A: That's the Law of Spline Demand.
Some electronic components are now so small that more time is spent looking for them than using them.
Arthur C. Clarke
Some things have to be believed to be seen.
Ralph Hodgson on ESP
Sometimes the highest payoff for the future is finding out what won't work, but there's not much profit for investors in that discovery.
Jerry Pournelle
Statistics are a little bit like a bikini: what they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
Irving R. Levine
The abdomen, the chest and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.
Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873
The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.
Linus Pauling
The country is accustomed to having foreign workers come here for unpleasant, low-paying jobs such as fruit picking. Why shouldn't engineering go the same way?
Richard F. Etter
The exploration and ultimate colonization of the solar system is the only future worthy of truly great nations at this time in history. The Soviets, who cannot even feed themselves, seem to understand this.
John S. Powers
Law of Superiority
The first example of superior principle is always inferior to the developed example of inferior principle.
The function of an expert is not to be more right than other people, but to be wrong for more sophisticated reasons.
David Butler
The future masters of technology will have to be lighthearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb.
Marshall McLuhan, 1969
The human race likes to give itself airs. One good volcano can produce more greenhouse gases in a year than the human race has in its entire history.
Ray Bradbury
The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.
Francis Bacon
The mole is a quantity of substance. The new prefix "guaca" is defined such that one guacamole equals Avocado's Number.
G. Byrne
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best---and therefore never scrutinize or question.
Stephen Jay Gould
The number you have dialed is imaginary. Rotate phone 90 degrees and try again.
Clarke's Second Law
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke
The really great scientific discoveries aren't usually accompanied by the shout of "Eureka" but by the murmur of "That's funny."
Isaac Asimov
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is
beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes
me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten
alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with
fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping
parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst,
and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty,
this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the
population until the natural state of starvation and misery is
restored.
In a universe of electrons and selfish genes,
blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are
going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you
won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The
universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should
expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no
good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
Richard Dawkins, "God's Utility Function", Scientific American, November 1995
The universe is simple; it's the explanation that's complex.
The wheels of progress are not turned by cranks.
There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right.
Carl Sagan
There are 10**11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
Richard Feynman, physicist, Nobel laureate (1918-1988)
There are no scientific tests for race... blood is blood, and bone is bone. Race is a con game. Don't play.
Will Shetterly
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Disraeli
There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program: your tax dollar will go farther.
Wernher von Braun
There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.
Sir Joshua Reynolds
There is often a large gap between theory and practice... Furthermore, the gap between theory and practice in practice is much larger than the gap between theory and practice in theory.
Jeff Case
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Carl Sagan
Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics
Things get worse under pressure.
This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.
Western Union internal memo, 1876
Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion.
Francis Bacon
Harvard Law
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
Osborn's Law
Variables won't; constants aren't.
Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of thirty-five.
Joel Hildebrand (1881-1983)
WARNING: Do not look into laser with remaining eye!
Sign found at MIT's Junior Lab
Wanted dead and alive: Schroedinger's cat
We can lick gravity, but the paperwork's a bit tougher.
Werner von Braun
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
Thomas Alva Edison
Sign on a Child Psychologist's Door
We have always depended on the strangeness of kinder.
What I cannot create I do not understand.
Richard Feynman
Clarke's First Law
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Arthur C. Clarke
When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind.
Lord Kelvin
Within a decade, the shuttle had become a symbol of technology defeated by its own complexity. ... The shuttle had achieved a kind of Pyrrhic reusability: the cost of refurbishing it after each flight far exceeded the cost of standard rockets. ...and --- despite NASA's public claims to the contrary --- the scientific and technological products of the shuttle were negligible. The space agency systematically misled Congress and the public about the costs and benefits.
James Gleick, "Genius"
You are 97% water; the other 3% keeps you from drowning.
P. E. Morris
Zenophobia: The irrational fear of convergent sequences.