Wonder quotes
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Contents
Albert_Einstein
Mysterious
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
- Source:
- Albert Einstein in his ‘The World as I See It’, later published in 1931 in the book ‘Living Philosophies’, ISBN 978-0404591281.
Michael_Faraday
Wonderful Dream
“All this is a dream. Still, examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency.”
- Source: Laboratory/Journal/Writer=Michael Faraday; Entry/Id=#10,040; Entry/Date=1849-03-19; Book/Title=“The Life and Letters of Faraday”; Publication/Date=1870; Volume=II; Page=248; Editor=Henry Bence Jones.
- Notes: This has sometimes been quoted partially as “Nothing is too wonderful to be true”, and can be seen engraved above the doorway of the south entrance to the Humanities Building at UCLA in Los Angeles, California.
- Keywords: Reality_quotes Dreaming_quotes Experiment_quotes Examination_quotes Wonder_quotes Truth_quotes Law_quotes Consistency_quotes Nature_quotes
Self-Correction
“Among those points of self-education which take up the form of mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires. It is impossible for any one who has not been constrained, by the course of his occupation and thoughts, to a habit of continual self-correction, to be aware of the amount of error in relation to judgment arising from this tendency. The force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.”
- Source: Michael Faraday. Royal Institution Lecture On Mental Education (6 May 1854), as reprinted in Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics, by Michael Faraday, 1859, pp 474-475.
- Keywords: Self-Education_quotes Autodidact_quotes Mental_quotes Discipline_quotes Importance_quotes Conflict_quotes Vanity_quotes Tendency_quotes Self-Deception_quotes Wish_quotes Resistance_quotes Desire_quotes Impossibility_quotes Constraint_quotes Occupation_quotes Thinking_quotes Habit_quotes Self-Correction_quotes Error_quotes Judgment_quotes Temptation_quotes Urge_quotes Evidence_quotes Disregard_quotes Opposition_quotes Wonder_quotes Promotion_quotes Practice_quotes Self-Abnegation_quotes Tribalism_quotes Common_Sense_quotes
Richard_Feynman
Classical Theory
“... I'm not happy with all the analyses that go with just the classical theory, because nature isn't classical, dammit. And if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical, and, by golly, it's a wonderful problem because it doesn't look so easy.”
- Source: Article/Title: “Simulating Physics with Computers”; Journal/Name: International Journal of Theoretical Physics; Volume: 21; Publication/Date: 1982; Page: 486.
Joseph_Heller
Lousy Earth
“What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere.”
- Source: Heller, Joseph. 'Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition'. Chapter 39 'The Eternal City', page 483. Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
- Keywords: Lousy_quotes Earth_quotes Wonder_quotes People_quotes Destitute_quotes Night_quotes Country_quotes Home_quotes Shanty_quotes Husband_quotes Drunk_quotes Wife_quotes Socked_quotes Children_quotes Bully_quotes Abuse_quotes Abandoned_quotes Family_quotes Hungry_quotes Food_quotes Afford_quotes Buy_quotes Heart_quotes Broken_quotes Suicide_quotes Insanity_quotes Cockroach_quotes Landlord_quotes Triumph_quotes Win_quotes Lose_quotes Success_quotes Failure_quotes Rich_quotes Poor_quotes Men_quotes Wise_quotes Stupid_quotes Happy_quotes Ending_quotes Honest_quotes Liar_quotes Brave_quotes Coward_quotes Loyal_quotes Traitor_quotes Saint_quotes Corrupt_quotes Position_quotes Trust_quotes Sell_quotes Soul_quotes Blackguards_quotes Petty_quotes Cash_quotes Straight_quotes Narrow_quotes Crooked_quotes Path_quotes Good_quotes Bad_quotes Addition_quotes Subtraction_quotes Einstein(topic)_quotes Old_quotes Violin_quotes Sculptor_quotes
David_Kipping
Simulation Depth Limit
“Given... the ensemble of all [simulated] realities that will ever exist, one might wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes... There should exist some limit to how deep the generations can indeed go... This is motivated by the fact the base civilization is truly responsible for simulating all of the daughters beneath it, and it presumably has some finite computational limit at its disposal.”
- Source: David Kipping from the paper “A Bayesian Approach to the Simulation Argument”, published 2020 in the journal ‘Universe’, volume 6, issue 8. DOI:10.3390/universe6080109. Online at https://www.mdpi.com
/2218-1997 /6/8/109 (2025).
- Keywords: Simulation_quotes Reality_quotes Ensemble_quotes Exist_quotes Wonder_quotes Deep_quotes Rabbit_quotes Hole_quotes Limit_quotes Generation_quotes Motivation_quotes Fact_quotes Base_quotes Civilization_quotes True_quotes Responsible_quotes All_quotes Daughter_quotes Beneath_quotes Presume_quotes Finite_quotes Computation_quotes Disposal_quotes
George_Miller
Magic Seven
“What about the magical number seven? What about the seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven daughters of Atlas in the Pleiades, the seven ages of man, the seven levels of hell, the seven primary colors, the seven notes of the musical scale, and the seven days of the week? What about the seven-point rating scale, the seven categories for absolute judgment, the seven objects in the span of attention, and the seven digits in the span of immediate memory? ... Perhaps there is something deep and profound behind all these sevens, something just calling out for us to discover it.”
- Source: George A. Miller in the article ‘The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information’. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97. Also online at https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Miller/ .
- Keywords: Magic_quotes Number_quotes Seven_quotes Wonder_quotes Sea_quotes Sin_quotes Pleiades_quotes Age_quotes Man_quotes Level_quotes Hell_quotes Color_quotes Primary_quotes Music_quotes Scale_quotes Day_quotes Week_quotes Rating_quotes Judgment_quotes Span_quotes Attention_quotes Digit_quotes Memory_quotes Deep_quotes Profound_quotes Call_quotes Discover_quotes
Steven_Pinker
Experts
“Experts are invaluable and are usually rewarded in esteem and wealth. But our reliance on experts puts temptation in their path. The experts can allude to a world of wonders — occult forces, angry gods, magical potions — that is inscrutable to mere mortals but reachable through their services. Tribal shamans are flimflam artists who supplement their considerable practical knowledge with stage magic, drug-induced trances, and other cheap tricks. Like the Wizard of Oz, they have to keep their beseechers from looking at the man behind the curtain, and that conflicts with the disinterested search for the truth.”
- Source: Steven Pinker (1997). How the Mind Works. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06973-0; eISBN 978-0-393-06973-0. Chapter 5 Section: Ecological Intelligence.
- Keywords: Expert_quotes Invaluable_quotes Reward_quotes Esteem_quotes Wealth_quotes Reliance_quotes Temptation_quotes Path_quotes Allude_quotes World_quotes Wonder_quotes Occult_quotes Anger_quotes God_quotes Magic_quotes Inscrutable_quotes Mortality_quotes Reach_quotes Service_quotes Tribal_quotes Shaman_quotes Flimflam_quotes Art_quotes Supplement_quotes Practical_quotes Knowledge_quotes Stage_quotes Drug_quotes Induce_quotes Trance_quotes Cheap_quotes Trick_quotes Wizard_quotes Oz_quotes Beseech_quotes Look_quotes Behind_quotes Curtain_quotes Conflict_quotes Search_quotes Truth_quotes Disinterest_quotes
Carl_Sagan
Science Arouses Wonder
“Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.”
- Source: Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996), 6.
- Keywords: Science_quotes Arise_quotes Soar_quotes Wonder_quotes Pseudoscience_quotes Sparse_quotes Poor_quotes Popularity_quotes Abandon_quotes Ecology_quotes Niche_quotes Prompt_quotes Fill_quotes Wide_quotes Understanding_quotes Claim_quotes Knowledge_quotes Requirements_quotes Adequate_quotes Evidence_quotes Before_quotes Acceptance_quotes Room_quotes
Natural Born Scientist
“Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.”
- Source: Carl Sagan, Quoted in interview with magazine staff, Psychology Today (Jan 1996).
