“...there are no illuminating single phrases that capture the complexity of human life”

--Noam Chomsky linguist, political activist (source)

ידעתי כי אין טוב בם כי אם לשמוח ולעשות טוב בחייו׃

"I have come to realise that nothing is better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live."

--'The Preacher' (Hebrew Tanakh Eccl. 3:12)

"It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (writer, 1803-1882)

"Errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous"

-- David Hume (philosopher, 1711-1776)

"Mathematics is the only subject where, once you have proved something, it is true for ever"

--Marcus du Sautoy (Mathematician)

"In a demon-haunted world, science is a candle in the dark."

-- Carl Sagan(1934-1996)

“Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.”

--Jules Verne (1828-1905)

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

--Upton Sinclair (author, 1935)

"Gedanken sind die Schatten unserer Empfindungen -- immer dunkler, leerer, einfacherer als diese “

("Thoughts are the shadows of our emotions/sensations —always darker, emptier, simpler than the latter.”)

--Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

--Stephen Hawking (physicist) (source)

"The kind of people we need in Washington won't go to Washington."

--Thomas Sowell (economist)

"Think twice before you think."

--ee cummings (poet)

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable."

--John F. Kennedy (US president)

"Η έναρξη της Σοφίας είναι ο καθορισμός των εκφράσεων "

(“The beginning of wisdom, is the definition of terms”)

--Socrates (philosopher)

"Notitia linguarum est prima porta sapientiae."

("Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.")

--Roger Bacon (scientist)

"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth."

--George Carlin (comedian)

"Ich fürchte, wir werden Gott nicht los, weil wir noch an die Grammatik glauben…"

("I am afraid we are not yet rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.")

--Friedrich Nietzsche (philosopher)

"Twilight of the Idols"

"Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!"

("That is not only not right, it is not even wrong.")

Wolfgang Pauli (physicist)

"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

Humpty Dumpty (from Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass" 1872)

"One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh."

Robert A. Heinlein (author)