Steve Jones

“For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“If you put away those who report accurately, you’ll keep only those who know what you want to hear,” Jessica said, her voice sweet. “I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“Philosophy is written in this grand book the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze,” Galileo believed. “But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and to read the alphabet in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth.”
― Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love