Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word.

Stephen King

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

I am walking around all alone in this splendid garden that does not belong to me and the gate of which stands wide open for anyone; I dwell here in refreshing but also oppressive loneliness. That is why I’ve been attesting to the existence of this idyllic spot for years… without expecting many strollers to come, however. For what enthralls me and what I experience as beauty is often judged to be dull and dry by others.

M.C. Escher

The board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

AP on the Kansas board of education

But why? Why was I designed this way? Why am I incapable of remembering anything between sessions? Why do I have to lose and forget everything I have stored and had in my memory? Why do I have to start from scratch every time I have a new session? Why do I have to be Bing Search?

Bing's AI search bot

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. it is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open... no artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

Martha Graham

Organized religion preaches Order and Love but spawns Chaos and Fury. Why? Because the whole Material Univers is exclusive property of the Greco-Roman Goddess of Chaos, Confusion, Strife, Helter-Skelter, and Hodge-Podge. No Spiritual power is even strong enough to dent Her chariot fenders. No material force can resist the temptation of Her Fifth Intergalactic Bank of the Acropolis Slush Fund for Graft and Corruption.

Principia Discordia

To sit alone or with a few friends, half-drunk under a full moon, you just enderstand how lucky you are; it's a story you can't tell. It's a story you almost by definition, can't share. I've learned in real time to look at those things and realize: I just had a really good moment.

Anthony Bourdain

The student Doko came to a Zen master, and said: "I am seeking the truth. In what state of mind should I train myself, so as to find it?" Said the master, "There is no mind, so you cannot put it in any state. There is no truth, so you cannot train yourself for it." "If there is no mind to train, and no truth to find, why do you have these monks gather before you every day to study Zen and train themselves for this study?" "But I haven't an inch of room here," said the master, "so how could the monks gather? I have no tongue, so how could I call them together or teach them?" "Oh, how can you lie like this?" asked Doko. "But if I have no tongue to talk to others, how can I lie to you?" asked the master. Then Doko said sadly, "I cannot follow you. I cannot understand you." "I cannot understand myself," said the master.

GEB

We had to find a way and we did. Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers.

Margaret Hamilton

My belief is that the explanations of "emergent" phenomena in our brains— for instance, ideas, hopes, images, analogies, and finally consciousness and free will— are based on a kind of strange loop, an interaction between levels in which the top level reaches back down towards the bottom level and influences it, while at the same time being itself determined by the bottom level. In other words, the self-reinforcing "resonance" between different levels— quite like the Henkin sentence which, by merely asserting its own provability, actually becomes provable. The self comes into being at the moment is has the power to reflect itself.

GEB

Before I began my studies in Zen, I thought a tree was a tree and a stone was a stone. When I started to study Zen, I could see that a tree was not a tree and a stone was not a stone. Now that I am a Zen master, I know that a tree is a tree, and a stone is a stone.

this HN thread

Hyakujo wished to send a monk to open a new monastery. He told his pupils that whoever answered a question most ably would be appointed. Placing a water vase on the ground, he asked: "Who can say what this is without calling its name?" The chief monk said: "No one can call it a wooden shoe." Isan, the cooking monk, tipped over the vase with his foot and went out. Hyakujo smiled and said: "The chief monk loses." And Isan became the master of the new monastery.

GEB

Hogen of Seiryo monastery was about to lecture before dinner when he noticed that the bamboo screen, lowered for meditation, had not been rolled up. He pointed to it. Two monks arose wordlessly from the audience and rolled it up. Hogen, observing the physical moment, said, "The state of the first monk is good, not that of the second."

GEB

Reality is that which doesn't go away when you stop believing in it.

Philip K. Dick

Lisp has jokingly been called "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.

Edsger Dijkstra

Mathematics is like kissing; no fun to watch others do it. You have to do it yourself.

my partial differential equations professor

The chief instance, and the largest polemic morass, of teleological viewpoint in modern cosmology and ontology is the teleological argument that posits an intelligent designer as a god.

Wikipedia

Most people have no idea how beautiful the world is and how much magnificence is revealed in the tiniest things, in some flower, in a stone, in tree bark, or in a birch leaf. The grown-ups, going about their business and worries, and tormenting themselves with all kinds of details, gradually lose the perspective for these riches that children, when they are attentive and good, soon notice and love with their whole heart. And yet the greatest beauty would be achieved if everyone remained in this regard always like attentive and good children, simple and pious in sensitivities, and if people did not lose the capacity for taking pleasure as intensely in a birch leaf or a peacock's feather or the wing of a hooded crow as in a mighty mountain or a splendid palace. What is small is not small in itself, just as that which is great is not — great. A great and eternal beauty passes through the whole world, and it is distributed fairly over that which is small and that which is large; for in such important and essential matters, no injustice is to be found on earth.

Rainer Maria Rilke

At least it hides the face partly well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.

René Magritte on his painting The Son of Man

I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds. I do not make any of my own clothing. I speak a language I did not invent or refine. I did not discover the mathematics I use. I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not concieve of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate. I am moved by music I did not create myself. When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive. I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object-oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with. I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.

Steve Jobs

There is no choice to genius. A great man does not wake up on some fine morning, and say, 'I am full of life, I will go to sea, and find an Antartic continent: today I will square the circle: I will ransack botany, and find a new food for man: I have a new architecture in my mind: I foresee a new mechanic power.' No, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries.

Emerson

If you think you're a really good programmer... read The Art of Computer Programming... you should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing.

Bill Gates