“It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.”

Source: Briar Rose

Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)

Source: Norwegian Wood

Mathematical Problems (1900)
Context: History teaches the continuity of the development of science. We know that every age has its own problems, which the following age either solves or casts aside as profitless and replaces by new ones. If we would obtain an idea of the probable development of mathematical knowledge in the immediate future, we must let the unsettled questions pass before our minds and look over the problems which the science of today sets and whose solution we expect from the future. To such a review of problems the present day, lying at the meeting of the centuries, seems to me well adapted. For the close of a great epoch not only invites us to look back into the past but also directs our thoughts to the unknown future.

Remarks on his attitude after discovering he had terminal mesothelioma, on The Late Show with David Letterman (30 October 2002)

Source: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

Source: Good in Bed

quote of c. 1927
Quote in 'Autour de Ballet Méchanique', as quoted in Fernand Léger – The Later Years -, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota; published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, pp. 21-22
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's