Collected quotes
(motivations)
It is only shallow
people who do not judge by appearances.
Oscar Wilde (The Picture Of Dorian Gray)
Have you ever heard of G.B. Shaw's razor-sharp wit? For all
his Shavian wit, the bearded Irishman could be bettered. The actress Cornelia
Otis Skinner got the best of Shaw in the following exchange of telegrams (!)
after a revival of his "Candida."
Shaw: Excellent. Greatest.
Skinner: Undeserving such praise.
Shaw: I meant the play.
Skinner: So did I.
When
your Daemon is in charge,
do not try to think consciously.
Drift, wait and obey.
R. Kipling
Como no me he preocupado de nacer, no me preocupo de morir
Federico García Lorca
Dario Vergassola: Si parla
tanto di fuga di cervelli. Il suo quando e' scappato?
Valeria Marini: Non ha avuto bisogno di
scappare.
(Scherzi a parte, 12 dicembre 2003. La risposta e' stata istantanea. Da quel
giorno ho rivalutato la Marini)
It is good to have an end to journey toward;
but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K. Le Guin
You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time.
Albert Einstein. A very
actual statement, nowadays.
My clan
against the enemy,
my family against the clan,
my brother and I against my family,
myself against my brother.
Somali proverb, as told by a Somali friend of
mine (forgive my translation)
In 1748 the Shahinshah of Persia, Nadir Shah, invaded India and he marched on to
Delhi. He inflicted a severe defeat on the Great Mogul of India. Delhi submitted
and the two kings met to negotiate peace. At the conclusion of these
negotiations, which included the transfer of the famous Peacock Throne to Iran
from Delhi, the Grand Vizier of the defeated Indian King, Asifiah was summoned
to present to the two monarchs some wine to pledge the peace. The Vizier was
faced with a real dilemma of protocol. The dilemma was this; to whom should he
present the first cup of wine? If he presented it first to his own master, the
insulted Persian might draw his sword and slice the Vizier's head off. If he
presented it to the Persian invader first, his own master might resent it. After
a moment of reflection, the Grand Vizier hit on a brilliant solution. He
presented a golden tray with two cups on it to his own master and retired
saying, "Sire it is not my station to present wine today. Only a King may serve
a King." In this spirit I request one Grand Master of our subject, Professor
Dirac, to introduce another Grand Master, Professor Werner Heisenberg.
Abdus Salam, (not) introducing W. Heisenberg at a Conference on
Contemporary Physics in Trieste.
You can find Dirac's enigmatic introduction in "From a life of physics" (World
Scientific, Singapore, 1989)
Reality is merely an illusion,
albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein
Time is
an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
Ford Prefect, in "The Hitch-Hiker to the Galaxy" (Douglas
Adams)
Temet Nosce
("Know Thyself" in Latin.) From the great movie series "Matrix."
[Actually, this comes from "gnothi seauton" (Greek): a precept inscribed in gold letters over the portico of the temple at Delphi. Its authorship has been ascribed to Pythagoras, to several of the wise men of Greece, and to Phemonoe, a mythical Greek poetess. According to Juvenal, this precept descended from heaven.]
(... and then one proceeds to determine “the” speed of a particle, which turns out to vanish (the only real solution: check!); from a student report)
Ramanujan-Hardy's conjecture on the
number of partitions p of the number n. You must have heard of the
intricate relationship between Hardy and Ramanujan. The "combination" of Hardy's
skill at negotiating complex proofs and Ramanujan's blind insistence (!) that a
formula must exist carried them both through to its discovery.
Incidentally, Littlewood never understood "why Ramanujan was so certain there
was one [formula]".
I learned this story from du Sautoy's book "The music of the primes" (beware of
a small misprint in the above formula...). I cannot help finding this formula
extraordinary: I wonder from where it was conjured.