Reader > Reader's Quotes

“You ask me if an ordinary person—by studying hard—would get to be able to imagine these things like I imagine. Of course. I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There's no miracle people. It just happens they got interested in this thing, and they learned all this stuff. They're just people. There's no talent or special miracle ability to understand quantum mechanics or a miracle ability to imagine electromagnetic fields that comes without practice and reading and learning and study. So if you take an ordinary person who's willing to devote a great deal of time and study and work and thinking and mathematics, then he's become a scientist.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“There's a big difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“When Sir Isaac Newton discovered the universal law of gravitation he did not say, ‘I have discovered a mechanism that accounts for planetary motion, therefore there is no agent God who designed it.’ Quite the opposite: precisely because he understood how it worked, he was moved to increased admiration for the God who had designed it that way.”
― John C. Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

“If life is the result of a purely naturalistic process, what then of morality? Has it, too, evolved? And if so, of what significance are our concepts of right and wrong, justice and truth?”
― John C. Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

“Why do we see only three space dimensions and one time dimension? The suggestion is that the other dimensions are curved up into a space of very small size, something like a million million million million millionth of an inch. This is so small that we just don’t notice it: we see only one time dimension and three space dimensions, in which space-time is fairly flat.”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God.”
― Stephen Hawking, A Briefer History of Time

“In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”
― John C. Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

“The CIA had been covering Cuba with U-2 flights for years. And then, in August 1962, they hit pay dirt and came up with the pictures that showed the Russians were planting ballistic missiles right next door, SS-4s and SS-5s. When Kennedy was shown the site constructions, he asked, “How do we know these sites are being manned?” They showed Kennedy a picture taken from 72,000 feet, showing a worker taking a dump in an outdoor latrine. The picture was so clear you could see that guy reading a newspaper.”
― Ben R. Rich, Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

“Had we built Blackbird in the year 2010, the world would still have been awed by such an achievement. But the first model, designed and built for the CIA as the successor to
the U-2, was being test-flown as early as 1962. Even today, that feat seems nothing less than
miraculous.”
― Ben R. Rich & Leo Janos;, Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed

“Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is to ask the question why. On the other hand, the people whose business it is to ask why, the philosophers, have not been able to keep up with the advance of scientific theories.”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“Chaos should be taught, he argued. It was time to recognize that the standard education of a scientist gave the wrong impression. No matter how elaborate linear mathematics could get, with its Fourier transforms, its orthogonal functions, its regression techniques, May argued that it inevitably misled scientists about their overwhelmingly nonlinear world. “The mathematical intuition so developed ill equips the student to confront the bizarre behaviour exhibited by the simplest of discrete nonlinear systems,” he wrote. “Not only in research, but also in the everyday world of politics and economics, we would all be better off if more people realized that simple nonlinear systems do not necessarily possess simple dynamical properties.”
― James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science

“The example of the jet engine can help us to clear up another confusion. Science, according to many scientists, concentrates essentially on material causation. It asks the “how” questions: how does the jet engine work? It also asks the “why” question regarding function: why is this pipe here? But it does not ask the “why” question of purpose: why was the jet engine built? What is important here is that Sir Frank Whittle does not appear in the scientific account. To quote Laplace, the scientific account has “no need of that hypothesis”.29 Clearly, however, it would be ridiculous to deduce from this that Whittle did not exist. He is the answer to the question: why does the jet engine exist in the first place?”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking

“Science is deeply embedded in modern civilization—but the average citizen does not understand the scientific life or how scientific discoveries are made. Neither is it generally understood that scientific discovery is never a neat story. Writing about a life in science is thus by definition particularly onerous. The biographer in this case has to understand not only the life but also the science.”
― Kai Bird

“The solvable systems are the ones shown in textbooks. They behave. Confronted with a nonlinear system, scientists would have to substitute linear approximations or find some other uncertain backdoor approach. Textbooks showed students only the rare non-linear systems that would give way to such techniques. They did not display sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Nonlinear systems with real chaos were rarely taught and rarely learned. When people stumbled across such things-and people did-all their training argued for dismissing them as aberrations. Only a few were able to remember that the solvable, orderly, linear systems were the aberrations. Only a few, that is, understood how nonlinear nature is in its soul. Enrico Fermi once exclaimed, "It does not say in the Bible that all laws of nature are expressible linearly!" The mathematicians Stanislaw Ulam remarked that to call the study of chaos "nonlinear science" was like calling zoology "the study of nonelephant animals.”
― James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science

“Vibration always worried Libchaber. Experiments, like real nonlinear systems, existed against a constant background of noise. Noise hampered measurement and corrupted data. In sensitive flows—and Libchaber’s would be as sensitive as he could make it—noise might sharply perturb a nonlinear flow, knocking it from one kind of behavior into another. But nonlinearity can stabilize a system as well as destabilize it. Nonlinear feedback regulates motion, making it more robust. In a linear system, a perturbation has a constant effect. In the presence of nonlinearity, a perturbation can feed on itself until it dies away and the system returns automatically to a stable state. Libchaber believed that biological systems used their nonlinearity as a defense against noise. The transfer of energy by proteins, the wave motion of the heart’s electricity, the nervous system—all these kept their versatility in a noisy world. Libchaber hoped that whatever structure underlay fluid flow would prove robust enough for his experiment to detect.”
― James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science

“God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence – why there is something rather than nothing.”
― John C. Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

“The existence of laws of physics... strongly implies that there is a God who formulates such laws and ensures that the physical realm conforms to them.”
― John C. Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

“The more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator God, who designed the universe for a purpose, gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”
― John C. Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

“The essence of the this-time-is-different syndrome is simple. It is rooted in the firmly held belief that financial crises are things that happen to other people in other countries at other times; crises do not happen to us, here and now.”
― Carmen M. Reinhart, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

“Bubbles are far more dangerous when they are fueled by debt, as in the case of the global housing price explosion of the early 2000s.”
― Carmen M. Reinhart, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

“If you want to change the world… don’t ever, ever ring the bell.”
― William H. McRaven, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World

“It is easy to blame your lot in life on some outside force, to stop trying because you believe fate is against you. It is easy to think that where you were raised, how your parents treated you, or what school you went to is all that determines your future. Nothing could be further from the truth. The common people and the great men and women are all defined by how they deal with life’s unfairness: Helen Keller, Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking, Malala Yousafzai, and—Moki Martin. Sometimes no matter how hard you try, no matter how good you are, you still end up as a sugar cookie. Don’t complain. Don’t blame it on your misfortune. Stand tall, look to the future, and drive on!”
― William H. McRaven, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World

“You cannot paddle the boat alone. Find someone to share your life with. Make as many friends as possible, and never forget that your success depends on others.”
― William H. McRaven, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World

“If you want to change the world… be your very best in the darkest moments.”
― William H. McRaven, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World

“If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right. And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.”
― William H. McRaven, Make Your Bed: Feel grounded and think positive in 10 simple steps

“Life is full of difficult times. But someone out there always has it worse than you do. If you fill your days with pity, sorrowful for the way you have been treated, bemoaning your lot in life, blaming your circumstances on someone or something else, then life will be long and hard. If, on the other hand, you refuse to give up on your dreams, stand tall and strong against the odds - then life will be what you make of it - and you can make it great.”
― William H. McRaven, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World