Under the Microscope Prof William RevilleFor a little bit of early summer amusement, I offer you a miscellaneous selection of quotations on science and wisdom:
"Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd rather have been talking." - Aristotle
"Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night." - Isaac Asimov
"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount." - Omar N Bradley
"You aren't wealthy until you have something money can't buy." - Garth
Brooks
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Winston Churchill
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes." - Winston Churchill.
"Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." - Cree Indian prophecy
"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood." - Marie Curie
"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love." - Albert Einstein
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler." - Albert Einstein
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." - Albert Einstein
"The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle." - Albert Einstein
"Whether you think you can or think you can't - you are right." - Henry Ford
"In the struggle against evil, there is no shame in defeat - only in not fighting." - Steven Hart
"Your friend is the man who knows all about you and still likes you." - Elbert Hubbard
"Science is organised knowledge. Wisdom is organised life." - Immanuel Kant
"You know nothing for sure . . . except the fact that you know nothing for sure." - John F Kennedy
"Life is what happens while you are making other plans." - John Lennon
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite." - Sam Levenson
"There are two rules for success: 1) Never tell everything you know." - Roger H Lincoln
"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?" - Abraham Lincoln
"Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated." - Howard Nemerov
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"When the passions become masters, they are vices." - Blaise Pascal
"Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know." - Bertrand Russell
"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." - Bertrand Russell
"The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it." - Alan Saporta
"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence university education." - George Bernard Shaw
"The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is." - George Bernard Shaw
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"You cannot kill time without injuring eternity." - Henry David Thoreau.
"Let us be thankful for the fools; but for them the rest of us could not succeed." - Mark Twain
"I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't." - Mark Twain
"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more." - Mark Twain
"When you're arguing with a fool, make sure he isn't doing the same thing." - unknown
"If you have to swallow a frog, try not to think about it. If you have to swallow two frogs, don't swallow the smaller one first." - unknown
"A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies." - Oscar Wilde
William Reville is associate professor of biochemistry and director of microscopy at UCC