I wanted to kill myself. I would have done it, too, if I had owned a gun. I was considering the gruesome alternatives - pills, slitting my wrists with a razor blade, jumping off a bridge - when another student called to ask me a detailed question on relativity. There was no way, after fifteen minutes of thinking about Mr. Einstein, that suicide was still a viable option. Divorce, certainly. Celibacy, highly likely. But death was out of the question. I could never have prematurely terminated my love affair with physics.
Arthur C. ClarkeRelated topics
affair ask blade bridge celibacy considering death divorce done fifteen gun jumping kill likely love off option physics question razor relativity slitting student suicide thinking viable way einstein minutesRelated quotes
It is better then, to save the work while it is begun. You have done the labor maintain it keep it. If men choose to serve you, go with them but as you have made up your organization upon principle, stand by it for as surely as God reigns over you, and has inspired your mind, and given you a sense of propriety, and continues to give you hope, so surely will you still cling to these ideas, and you will at last come back after your wanderings, merely to do your work over again.
Abraham Lincoln
No matter how "right” you may be on various points, you must be diplomatic also. The first and important thing is not "rightness” at all, but Christian love and harmony. Most "crazy converts” have been "right” in the criticisms that led to their downfall; but they were lacking in Christian love and charity and so went off the deep end, needlessly alienating people around them and finally finding themselves all alone in their rightness and self-righteousness. Don't you follow them!...
Seraphim Rose
By his theory of relativity Albert Einstein has provoked a revolution of thought in physical science. ...Physical space and time are found to be closely bound... with... motion of the observer; and only an amorphous combination of the two is left... It is my aim to give an account of this work without introducing anything very technical in... mathematics, physics, or philosophy. ...[T]he task is one of interpreting a clear-cut theory... although perhaps not everyone would accept the author's views of its meaning.
Arthur Eddington
The student who would build his knowledge on solid foundations, and proceed by just degrees to the pinnacles of truth, is directed by the great philosopher of France to begin by doubting of his own existence. In like manner, whoever would complete any arduous and intricate enterprise, should, as soon as his imagination can cool after the first blaze of hope, place before his own eyes every possible embarrassment that may retard or defeat him. He should first question the probability of success, and then endeavour to remove the objections that he has raised.
Samuel Johnson
Have I ever remarked on how completely ridiculous it is to ask high school students to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives and give them nearly no support in doing so? Support like, say, spending a day apiece watching twenty different jobs and then another week at their top three choices, with salary charts and projections and probabilities of graduating that subject given their test scores? The more so considering this is a central allocation question for the entire economy?
Eliezer Yudkowsky
