The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.

Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.

For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I read more

For my confirmation, I didn't get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like most Lutheran boys. I got a telescope. My mother thought it would make the best gift.

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is read more

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. read more

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. Like faxes, computer modems and other modern gadgets that have clogged out lives with phony urgency, cell phones represent the 20th Century's escalation of imaginary need. We didn't need cell phones until we had them. Clearly, cell phones cause not only a breakdown of courtesy, but the atrophy of basic skills.

The only thing that I'd rather own than Windows is English, because then I could charge you two hundred and read more

The only thing that I'd rather own than Windows is English, because then I could charge you two hundred and forty-nine dollars for the right to speak it.

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.

...there is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. read more

...there is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. But the difference is that once you've made the intuitive leap you have to justify it by filling in the intermediate steps. In my case, it often happens that I have an idea, but then I try to fill in the intermediate steps and find that they don't work, so I have to give it up.

It will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It read more

It will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven.