“The best kind of exercise is the kind you actually do.” — Unknown.

“That which does not kill you gives you a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms and a really dark sense of humor.” — Unknown.

“I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, that when looked at in the right way didn’t become still more complicated.” — Poul Anderson

“Our own age is not one which can afford to call its ancestors savage.” — Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword

“I think most human misery is due to well-meaning fanatics like him.” — Poul Anderson, Time Patrol

“The last thing any sane person wants is a jihad.” — Poul Anderson, The Star Fox

“He’d seen too often how little of the universe is designed for man to neglect any safety measure.” — Poul Anderson, The Star Fox

‘“That,” replied Hardin, “is the interesting thing. The analysis was the most difficult of the three by all odds. When Houk, after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications—in short all the goo and dribble—he found he had nothing left. Everything canceled out. Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn’t say one damn thing, and said it so that you never noticed. There are the assurances you had from your precious Empire.”’ — Salvor Hardin, a character in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation

“A boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money” — Bob Barton, One of my managers when I worked at the Harris Bank in Chicago.

“Hell must be isothermal; for otherwise the resident engineers and physical chemists (of which there must be some) could set up a heat engine to run a refrigerator to cool off a portion of their surroundings to any desired temperature.” — Henry Albert Ben. Quoted in When the Universe was twice as hot.

“The universe is simmering down, like a giant stew left to cook for four billion years. Sooner or later we won’t be able to tell the carrots from the onions.” — Arthur Bloch

“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together. See also Sense of Community 🙂

“Other sciences seek to discover the laws that God has chosen;
mathematicians seek to discover the laws that God has to obey.” — Raoul Bott

“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.” — George Carlin

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” — Clarence Darrow

“The Universe will decline from here on in, sliding gently into old age. The Universe has basically sat down on the sofa, pulled up a blanket and is about to nod off for an eternal doze.” — Simon Driver. Quoted in Charting the Slow Death of the Universe.

“If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.” — Sir Arthur Eddington

“No Intellectually honest mind can long remain so termed unless it is willing to submit all things to rigorous examination, even the most sacred provinces. Blind faith is no faith; it is blindness.” — David Frangquist, 1966

“Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.” — W.S. Gilbert, The Mikado, 1885

“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. ” — Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

“Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.” — Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue-and thoroughly immoral-doctrine that, ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.” —” Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Beware of overconcern for money, or position, or glory. Someday you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.” ― Rudyard Kipling

“The world is very lovely, and it’s very horrible–and it doesn’t care about your life or mine or anything else.” ― Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed

“Gentlemen, You Can’t Fight In Here! This is The War Room.” — Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove

“When correctly viewed, everything is lewd” — Tom Lehrer, “Smut,” 1965. Counterexample (!)

“For there is surely nothing more beautiful in this world
Than the sight of a lone man facing single-handedly
A half a ton of angry pot roast!” — Tom Lehrer, “In Old Mexico,” 1959.

“The evolution of the world may be compared to a display of fireworks that has just ended: some few red wisps, ashes and smoke. Standing on a cooled cinder, we see the slow fading of the suns, and we try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds.” — G. Lemaitre

Q: “Why is light beer like making love in a canoe?”
A: “It is f*cking near water.” — Virginia G. McDavid, though perhaps not original with her.

“There’s always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Korilian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable planet. The only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they “do not know about it!” — Kay, Men in Black, 1997.

“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.” — Kay, Men in Black, 1997.

“Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it.” — Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is actually the right to destroy the city.” — Lewis Mumford

“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.” — John von Neumann

“I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.” — Isaac Newton, after losing a lot of money in the South Sea Bubble.

“There is no such thing as too much garlic.” — Dr. Robert Passovoy.

“Eat food. not too much. mostly plants.” — Michael Pollan.

“When four men sit down to talk revolution, three are police spies and the other a fool.” — Mack Reynolds, Code Duello, 1968.

“There is a dangerous temptation to link destruction levels together in the interests of tidiness and economy, but history is seldom tidy or notably economical, however it may be with philosophy. This is one of the reasons why history should not be written by philosophers or sociologists.” — N.K Sandars, The Sea Peoples. Also Writing history

“The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.” — Adam Savage.

“Atreus:  ‘Who would reject the flood of fortune’s gifts?’
 Thyestes:  ‘Anyone who has experienced how easily they flow back.’” — Seneca, Thyestes, 536, quoted in The Daily Stoic

“Glendower:  ‘I can call on spirits from the vasty deep!’
  Hotspur:  ‘Why so can I, and so can any man,
 but do they come when you do call them?'” — Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1.

“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!” — George Bernard Shaw.

“At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation.” — Igor Sikorsky.

“I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.” — Edith Sitwell

[In response to the assertion that ninety percent of science fiction is crap.] “Ninety percent of everything is crap.” — Theodore Sturgeon. This is now usually referred to as Sturgeon’s Law, but I learned it as “Sturgeon’s Revelation” from one of the works of Poul Anderson.

“The problem with general relativity is that the principles are pretty simple and the computations are always ugly.” — Leonard Susskind. True! I took a graduate course in general relativity back in 1973. There was at least one homework problem which needed 20 pages for the solution. 10 pages for a problem was routine.

“Atheists are just modern versions of religious fundamentalists: both take religion too literally.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

“Happiness; we don’t know what it means, how to measure it, or how to reach it, but we know extremely well how to avoid unhappiness.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

“Somehow it’s okay for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet, if I said ‘I never learned to read,’ they’d say I was an illiterate dolt.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson

“If you haven’t found something strange during the day, it hasn’t been much of a day.” — John Archibald Wheeler

“A language is a dialect with an army and a navy” — Max Weinreich

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• Religious Persecution, posted 8/17/2013.
• Statistics Hell, posted 12/15/2012.
• Mencken on the Presidency, posted 7/3/2021.