Random Quotes

Since everyone else is doing it, I’ll go along with the game, and post five random quotes that “reflect who you are or what you believe,” chosen from the randomizer at quotationspage.com.

This actually took a while, because I’m not wild about most of what they throw out. I’ll throw in a bonus sixth quote, though, because this one:

“Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.” –John F. Kennedy (1917 – 1963)

is pretty lightweight, but accurate.

More serious quotes after the cut.

“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what
to do with it.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)

“The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change
everything – or nothing.” –Nancy Astor (1879 – 1964)

“Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men,
but from doing something worthwhile.” –Sir Wilfred Grenfell (1865 – 1940)

“An idea isn’t worth that much. It’s the execution of the idea that
has value. If you can’t convince one other person that this is
something to devote your life to, then it’s not worth it.” –Joel Spolsky, Sink or Swim, SXSW 2006

“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply
that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at
Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright
brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” –Carl Sagan (1934 – 1996)

If you think this has provided any deep insights into my character, well, you’re doing better than I am.

4 comments

  2. The JFK quote is just as true of St. Louis, as any honest scientist there can attest. Of course it’s different in the baseball stadium, some other places, too, but try to get more done there than the locals are used to, and one will see exactly what JFK meant about Washington.

    I like the Carl Sagan one. I don’t know that it’s useful for anything, but it’s a funny thing to say, particularly imagining his voice saying it.

  3. Irish company challenges scientists to test ‘free energy’ technology

    “What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy,” McCarthy said.
    .
    “The energy isn’t being converted from any other source such as the energy within the magnet. It’s literally created. Once the technology operates it provides a constant stream of clean energy,” he told Ireland’s RTE radio.
    …
    “But we have been unable to get significant scientific interest in it. We have had scientists come in, test it and, off the record, they are quite happy to admit that it works.
    .
    “But for us to be able to commercialise this and put this into peoples’ lives we need credible, academic validation in the public domain and hence the challenge,” McCarthy said.

    Uh-huh.

  4. Chad, this question/comment is totally unrelated to the post, but I figured this was as good a place as any to ask it.

    I was just re-reading my tattered Feynman lectures, and came across the following: “…if we have an atom in a strong magnetic field and we “tickle” the atom with a weak varying electromagnetic field…”.

    Now, I don’t work in atomic physics (I do nanoscale stuff) but I’ve been to a number of talks by AMO physicists and they seem to like the word “tickle”, especially in this context. What is the origin of this usage of the word, and why isn’t it in the OED yet?

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