Lutra > Lutra's Quotes

“I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”
― Herbert Bayard Swope

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”
― Lance Armstrong Sally Jenkins, Every Second Counts

“You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?... It's all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they're really good at. It's all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It's all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad plowmen instead. It's all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when it's even possible to find out. It's all the people who never get to know what it is that they can really be. It's all the wasted chances.”
― Terry Pratchet

“Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification.”
― Karl Popper

“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.”
― Karl Popper

“True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.”
― Karl R. Popper

“All life is problem solving”
― Karl Popper

“Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
― Karl Popper

“Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.”
― Karl R. Popper

“A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others - not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others”
― Karl Popper

“Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.”
― Karl Popper

“I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”
― Toni Morrison