Sayings Collected by a Curmudgeonly Professor

"Being a curmudgeon is underrated" Tim Trucano

These sayings are a collection developed over many years. Originally, there was no intent to make this a scholarly work and therefore, unfortunately, many references are lacking, incomplete, flat ol' wrong. Mea maxima culpa.

All contributions that strike me as part of my Weltanschauung are gratefully accepted.

D. E. (Steve) Stevenson

Other Sites

Vaughn Pratt

A Collection of Science Humor

World of Quotes Website

Some Other Curmugeons

Richard Hamming

George Michael

More Good Stuff from George Michael

Here's some great sayings by Winston Churchill

Great H. L. Mencken Site

Celebrating the true spirit of Cynicism

Come in and enjoy The Cynics Sanctuary. Ya gotta just love it.

Humanism, not religion

Let's not forget science ...

Let's not forget skepticsm ...

Some Other Sites

Quotations.com

Nicholas Russon's Quotations Archive

Earlier files of quotes

2009 Quotes Harvested

I'm back in the saddle. Been really sick - had a heart attack in April, 2008 and just had a hell of a time getting back on my feet. But it's July and it's time to get on with it!

Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. -Dan Barker, former preacher, musician (b. 1949) [Check A Word A Day - wsmith@wordsmith.org. Great words and great quotes every day]



2008 Quotes Harvested

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. Edmund Burke.

2007 Quotes Harvested

When a generation talks just to itself, it becomes more filled with folly than it might have been otherwise. Stewart Brand.
The only nice thing about being imperfect is the joy it brings others. Doug Larson
Giving never happens by accident. It's always intentional. Amy Grant
Every great scientific truth goes through three stages:
-- JeanLouisAgassiz? (1807-1883)
"Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Richard Feynmann. These are my words to live by.
"All great truths begin as blasphamies," G. B. Shaw
"The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." T. H. Huxley.
"Mathematics also leads science. The great physicist, Paul Dirac, in one of his last addresses, explained his own credo (quoted in [12] p.63): 
"One should allow oneself to be led in the direction which the mathematics 

  suggests... one must follow up a mathematical idea and see what its 

  consequences are, even though one gets led to a domain which is completely 

  foreign to what one started with.... Mathematics can lead us in a direction 

  we would not take if we only followed up physical ideas by themselves."

[12] Ferris, T., The world treasury of physics, astronomy and mathematics, 

  Little, Brown and Co., 1991.

The quotation is in the article in this volume taken from `The second creation' by R.P. Crease and C.C. Mann (Macmillan, 1986).

"Being at some pause, looking back into that I have passed through, this writing seemeth to me, 'si nunquam fallit imago,' as far as a man can judge of his own work, not much better than the noise or sound which musicians make while they are tuning their instruments, which is nothing pleasant to hear but that is a cause why the music is sweeter aftewards: so have I been content to tune the instruments of the muses, that they may play that have betterhands." Francis Bacon.
"An interesting problem rarely has an elegant solution." — Anonymous
"... true learning is based on discovery guided by mentoring rather than the transmission of knowledge" - John Dewey
Knowledge is the beginning of practice; doing is the completion of knowing. —Wang Yang-Ming (1498)
Human beings have an infinite ability to create knowledge. Add the convenient fact that unlike conventional assests, knowledge grows when it is shared and you have the most powerful feature, which will change how we manage in the knowledge era. —Karl-Erik Sveiby
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong — but that's the way to bet. —Damon Runyon
You cannot solve the problem with the same kind of thinking that created the problem. —A. Einstein.
Vision without Action is fruitless. Action without Vision is pointless. Action and Vision together can change the world. —E. O. Wilson.
Only as high as I can reach can I grow.
Only as far as I can seek can I go.
Only as deep as I can look can I see.
Only as much as I can I dream can I be. —Karen Ravn (1903-1970)

 

Steve Stevenson

Last modified: Mon, July 23, 2007 14:49