I love quotations. They kind of get you thinking. In fact, I love them so much that we keep one of those gold ink pens in the downstairs loo so that we and our visitors can write on the dark burgundy wall anything that springs to mind, whether quoting a famous person or not! That way, when one of us has our "early morning constitutional", which may involve sitting on the loo for a while, we have plenty to cogitate about as we let our eyes wander over the graffiti-ridden walls.

Some of the quotes on this page are also on that wall. Others have been sent to me by friends and strangers from all over the World to include here; and others still, have simply been put on here as I come across them! So, if it is food for thought you want, have a look through these:

Scientific Quotations

"Probable impossibilities are always to be preferred to improbable possibilities."
Aristotle

"That's one step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
Neil Armstrong (1969 - the year I was born).

"So just how many kittens did Schrodinger's Cat have anyway, and through which hole did they arrive?"
Didi Barnes

"No physical world exists behind the apparently elementary sense impressions subjected to the reflection of the mind."
George Berkeley

"One of the favourite maxims of my father was the distinction between the two sorts of truth: profound truths recognised by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd."
Niels Bohr (1967)

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."
Neils Bohr (1885 - 1962)

"You never understand quantum physics, you just get used to it."
Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962)

"I think, therefore I am - I think."
Arthur C Clarkes version of Descartes famous saying.

"To predict the future, we need logic, but we also need faith and imagination which can sometimes defy logic itself."
Arthur C Clarke (inventor of communications satellite and author of "2001")

"My head is too full of triangles, chemical processes and electrical experiments to think much of marriage."
John Dalton (founder of atomic theory) (1766 - 1844)

"The only existing things are atoms and empty space; all else is mere opinion."
Democritus of Abdera (370BC) the original proposer of that matter is constructed of atoms!

"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."
Albert Einstein - "Physics and Reality" (1936)

"There is only one road to human greatness: through the school of hard knocks."
Albert Einstein

"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?"
Albert Einstein

"I have no particular talent, I am passionately inquisitive."
Albert Einstein

"Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? The simple answer: because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it."
Albert Einstein

"Fear or stupidity has always been the basis of most human actions."
Albert Einstein

"The value of achievement lies in the act of achieving."
Albert Einstein

"When I was young, I found that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock. So I stopped wearing socks."
Albert Einstein

"All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question, "what are light quanta?" Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken."
Einstein (1951)

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift".
Einstein

"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile".
Einstein

"The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It's the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead."
Einstein

"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough".
Einstein

"I never commit to memory anything that can easily be looked up in a book".
Einstein

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Einstein (1879 - 1955)

British biologist J.B.S.Habdane (1893 - 1964) on being asked what one could conclude as to the nature of the creator: "An inordinate fondness for beetles."

"His Lordship spends most of his time in his lavatory."
Lord Rayleigh's gamekeeper. (Rayleigh helped discover Argon; and discovered why the sky is blue - Rayleigh Scattering)

"Mathematics is a universal language which crosses boundaries between subjects and countries. It is very powerful and beautiful."
Alice Peasgood (of The Open University)

"Now I, even I would celebrate
In rhymes unapt
That great immortal syracusan
Rivalled nevermore
Who in his wondrous love
Passed on before
Left men his guidance
How to circles mensurate"
Anon. The number of letters of each word come to 3.141592654; get the gist?!

"To err is human, but to really fowl things up requires a computer."
The Farmers Almanac - 1978

Philosophical Quotations

"Life is, as always, a constant stream of half finished thoughts, bewilderment and slight incredulity about being put down here in a rather unweildy body"
My friend, Jules Gascoigne

"It is always easier to fight for ones principles than to live up to them."
Alfred Adler

"Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee."
Mohammed Ali

"We always find something, eh, Didi, to give us the impression that we exist?"
Beckett - "Waiting for Godot" (Act II) 1955

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."
Steve Biko

"If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition. If you want to know your future life, look into your present actions."
Buddha

"God grant me the strength to change the things I can, the courage to accept the things I cannot change and the wisdom to hide the bodies of all those who pissed me off!"
Anon

"Nobody realises that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
Camus

"In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different."
Coco Chanel

"Breeding is no substitute for intelligence."
Sean Connery as Dr Campbell in the "Medicine Man"

"Be aware of the need to be grateful fo the suffering and struggles that are part of the fabric of your life. Sometimes it is easy to simply be angry at your suffering rather than to know that it is the catalyst for your searching and awakening."
Wayne W Dwyer ("Manifest Your Destiny")

"Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past if all time is eternally present."
T.S. Elliot ("Burnt Norton")

"Those things that hurt, instruct."
Benjamin Franklin

"If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves".
Carl Jung (1932)

"That I feed the hungry, forgive an insult, and love my enemy - these are great virtues. But what if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and most impudent of offenders are all within me, and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness; that I myself am the enemy who must be loved - what then?"
Carl Jung

"Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering."
Carl Jung

"I do not believe......I know."
Carl Jung

"A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them."
Carl Jung 1962

"Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other."
Carl Jung 1964

"The one resolution, which was in my mind long before it took the form of a resolution, is the key-note of my life. It is this: always to regard as mere impertinences of fate the handicaps which were placed upon my life almost at the beginning. I resolved that they should not crush or dwarf my soul, but rather be made to blossom, like Aaron's rod, with flowers."
Helen Keller

"Nothing is real."
John Lennon 1940 - 1980

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
Abraham Lincoln

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Martin Luther King (1929 - 1968)

"Every man ought to be inquisitive through every hour of his great adventure down to the day when he shall no longer cast a shadow in the sun. For if he dies without a question in his heart, what excuse is there for his continuance."
Frank Moore Colby (1865-1925)

"There is only one good, namely knowledge, and only one evil, namely ignorance."
Plato

"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?"
Edgar Allen Poe

"I learnt from my own experience that the source of the happiness is within us, and that it is not in the power of man to make anyone truly miserable who is determined to be happy."
"Reveries of the Solitary Walker" by Jean-Jaques Rousseau

"The only place where "success" comes before "work" is in a dictionary."
Vidal Sassoon

"Because genuine love involves an extension of oneself, vast amounts of energy are required. So, like it or not, we simply cannot love everyone."
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Travelled)

"There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Hamlet - Shakespeare

"Oh beware, my Lord of jealousy! It is the green eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on."
Iago in Shakespeare's "Othello"

"A dream itself is but a shadow."
Hamlet in Shakespeare's "Hamlet"

"Words without thoughts never to heaven go."
The King in Shakespeare's "Hamlet"

"If I cannot inspire love, I will inspire fear."
The monster in Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein".

"Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?"
Frankenstein's monster (Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein")

"For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and loathing."
Frankenstein's monster (Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein")

"Try? No try. Do or do not; there is no try."
Yoda in Empire Strikes Back (Star Wars trilogy)

"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."
W.B.Yeates 1865 - 1939

"I believe I have an "obligation" as a self-aware entity to use my mind and skills to make things as pleasant as I can for me and all the other creatures I come into contact with. This I see purely as a way of making my existence have some sort of meaning, which otherwise it would not have."
Pete Wood

Misc Quotations

"Several years back a relative asked me what I do for a living. I told him I work with UNIX. He thought I said, "Eunuchs" and asked if I found that rather disturbing..."
Bruce

"I must say....a fast word about oral contraception: I asked a girl to go to bed with me and she said "no"."
Woody Allen (1965)

"Nature has poured forth all things for all men for common use".
Ambrose

"Madam, you have something between your legs that would give much pleasure to many people, and all you can do is scratch it."
Sir Thomas Beecham to Principal Cellist

"We thought we could put the economy right in 5 years. We were wrong. It will probably take ten."
Tony Benn (1968)

"The British House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians."
Tony Benn (1962)

"We are but visitors on this rock, hurtling through time and space at sixty-six thousand miles an hour, tethered to a burning sphere by an invisible force in an unfathomable universe. This most of us take for granted..."
Fox Mulder in "Syzygy" (X-Files).

Lady Aster: "Winston, you are drunk."
Winston Churchill: "Yes my dear, but you are ugly and in the morning I shall be sober."