To quote someone smarter than me…

“Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.”
– Brian Green (The Fabric of the Cosmos page 162)

‎”Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”
– Dalai Lama

“You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.”
– Ricky Gervais, Why I’m an Atheist (A Holiday Message)

“It’s taken me a lot of years, but I’ve come around to this: If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people. And if you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.”
– Isaac Jaffe (Sports Night episode 1.03)

“I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson, reddit AMA March 01, 2012

“I never let school get in the way of my education.”
– Mark Twain

“The way of mathematics is to make stuff up and see what happens; so let’s see what happens if…”
–Vi Hart, Pi Is (Still) Wrong

“Do not be cynical…it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get, but if you work really hard and you’re kind amazing things will happen…Amazing things will happen”
– Conan O’Brien, addressing his fans and viewers on his last night hosting The Tonight Show.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
– Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”, Ch. 7, Section 3 (1992)

“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
– J.K. Rowling, Harvard commencement address 2008

‎”You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose”
– Dr. Seuss

words from Ira Glass, click for source

“Good things do happen and it’s not stupid to hope for them.”
– Philip Defranco, Santa Roofies Young German Girls!

“In terms of stress relief and sensual pleasure, running is what you have in your life before you have sex. The equipment and desire come factory installed; all you have to do is let ‘er rip and hang on for the ride.”
– Christopher McDougall (Born to Run page 12)

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”
– Mario Savio, Sproul Hall Steps, December 2, 1964

“You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
– Harvey Dent (The Dark Knight)

words by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark, poster by Joshua Rothaas, click for source

“So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause…”
– Padme Amidala (Revenge of the Sith)

“What were they fighting for?…clarity, or whatever else it was that was the opposite of religion. For Humanity. For compassion…the triple strand that did so well in describing a relationship to the world: the religion with no God, with only this world, also several other potential realms of reality, mental realms, and the void itself, but no God, no shepherd ruling with the drooling strictures of a demented old patriarch, but rather innumerable immortal spirits in a vast panoply of realms and being, including humans and many other sentient beings besides, everything living, everything holy, sacred, part of the Godhead–for yes, there was a GOD if by that you meant only a transcendent universal self-aware entity that was reality itself, the cosmos, including everything, including human ideas and mathematical forms and relationships. That idea itself was God, and evoked a kind of worship that was attention to the real world, a kind of natural study.”
– Taken from Book 8: War of the Asuras, pg 496 of The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson; Bantam Books: New York, 2002.

“When you can write elegant code, it’s awesome, and I think most of the time everyone tries to. But it’s important to realize that at the end of the day, this is all a series of epic hacks, and sometimes the most sane thing to do is just embrace it.”
– Garann Means (www.garann.wordpress.com)

“In dealing with women, the size of a man’s ego causes more problems than the size of his manhood can solve.”
– Berkana, the Medora Roo (“Elom” by William H. Drinkard)

“Like a Shakespearean sonnet that captures the very essence of love, or a painting that brings out the beauty of the human form that is far more than just skin deep, Euler’s Equation reaches down into the very depths of existence.”
– Dr. Keith Devlin, Stanford University