“… life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; … it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it's as though you aren't there.”
from Alan Alda's graduation speech, 1980 http://www.graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0020-alda1.htm.
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Alan Alda12
actor and United States Army officer 1936Related quotes
“You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
variant: If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself. <br class="br">variant: If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. <br class="br">Frequently attributed to Richard Feynman <br class="br">Probably based on a similar quote about explaining physics to a "barmaid" by Ernest Rutherford <br class="br">Page 418 of Einstein: His Life and Times (1972) by Ronald W. Clark says that Louis de Broglie did attribute a similar statement to Einstein: <br class="br">: To de Broglie, Einstein revealed an instinctive reason for his inability to accept the purely statistical interpretation of wave mechanics. It was a reason which linked him with Rutherford, who used to state that "it should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid." Einstein, having a final discussion with de Broglie on the platform of the Gare du Nord in Paris, whence they had traveled from Brussels to attend the Fresnel centenary celebrations, said "that all physical theories, their mathematical expressions apart ought to lend themselves to so simple a description 'that even a child could understand them.' " <br class="br">The de Broglie quote is from his 1962 book New Perspectives in Physics, p. 184 http://books.google.com/books?id=xY45AAAAMAAJ&q=%22mathematical+expression+apart%22#search_anchor. <br class="br">Cf. this quote from David Hilbert's talk Mathematical Problems given in 1900 before the International Congress of Mathematicians: <br class="br">: "A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street." <br class="br">Cf. this quote from Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle:<br>: Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan. <br class="br">Misattributed
“What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?”
Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States
As quoted in An Honest President (2000) by H. Paul Jeffers, p. 200.
“Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese you dingus”
Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) film director
Mon Dernier soupir (My Last Sigh, 1983)
Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer
Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)
“Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless.”
Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist
“You have to stand up for what's right in life. Unless you do that… you're nothing. ”
Аарон Руссо (1943–2007) film producer
Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer
Source: The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979), p. 105