Famous Quotes & Sayings

Carl Friedrich Gauss

To the distracting occupations belong especially my lecture courses which I am holding this winter for the first time, and which now cost much more of my time than I like. Meanwhile I hope that the second time this expenditure of time will be much less, otherwise I would never be able to reconcile myself to it, even practical (astronomical) work must give far more satisfaction than if one brings up to B a couple more mediocre heads which otherwise would have stopped at A.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

I am giving this winter two courses of lectures to three students, of which one is only moderately prepared, the other less than moderately, and the third lacks both preparation and ability. Such are the onera of a mathematical profession.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

I have a true aversion to teaching. The perennial business of a professor of mathematics is only to teach the ABC of his science; most of the few pupils who go a step further, and usually to keep the metaphor, remain in the process of gathering information, become only Halbwisser [one who has superficial knowledge of the subject], for the rarer talents do not want to have themselves educated by lecture courses, but train themselves. And with this thankless work the professor loses his precious time.

Agnes Smedley

Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.... I was learning that books and diagrams can be evil things if they deaden the mind of man and make him blind or cynical before subjection of any kind.

Agnes Repplier

It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother.

Agnes Repplier

The carefully fostered theory that schoolwork can be made easy and enjoyable breaks down as soon as anything, however trivial, has to be learned.

Agnes Repplier

There is no liberal education for the under-languaged.

Alan K. Simpson

Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half empty one are contained in that word.

Alan K. Simpson

An educated man is thoroughly inoculated against humbug, thinks for himself and tries to give his thoughts, in speech or on paper, some style.

Carol Shields

He dares not concern himself with the future for fear of disturbing the present.

Carlos Castaneda

Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.

Savannah Cowley

We have no fear we won't have enough snow to stay open through Memorial Day Weekend, and there's always the possibility we'll open for the Fourth of July. Right now the possibilities are endless.

Agnes de Mille

I had had to learn the difference between the bearable fatigue and the unbearable, the fatigue of fear. The first can be cured by a night's sleep; the second kills.

Charlotte Bronte

It is a very strange sensation to inexperience youth to feel itself quite alone the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became predominant when half an hour elapsed, and still I was alone.

Charles Caleb Colton

There is this paradox in fear: he is most likely to inspire it in others who has none himself!

Charles Caleb Colton

The interests of society often render it expedient not to utter the whole truth, the interests of science never: for in this field we have much more to fear from the deficiency of truth than from its abundance.

Charles Caleb Colton

We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often despise what we really fear.

Larraine Segil

There is a lot of fear when an acquisition takes place. Most people are fiddling around with their resumes on their computers.

Charles Caleb Colton

The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health and power.

Ricky Gervais

Atheism is the lack of belief in a god (or gods). It makes no claim. It merely rejects the claim that a god (or gods) exists. Nothing more.

Ricky Gervais

Opinions don't affect facts. But facts should affect opinions, and do, if you're rational

Ricky Gervais

Atheism is a belief system”, is like saying “not going skiing, is a hobby.

C. Wright Mills

As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the spirit in permanent tension with the world than a respectable distraction from the sourness of life.

Charles Spurgeon

Opposition to divine sovereignty is essentially atheism.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The stony-minded orthodox were right in fearing the first movement of new knowledge and free thought. It has gone on, and will go on, irresistibly, until some day we shall have no respect for an alleged "truth" which cannot stand the full blaze of knowledge, the full force of active thought.

Charles Bradlaugh

Idle and meaningless ... a form less solemn to me than the affirmation I would have reverently made.

Charles Bradlaugh

There is a court to which I shall appeal: the court of public opinion.