“What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”

— Stephen Hawking , book A Briefer History of Time

Source: A Briefer History of Time

Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

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Stephen Hawking 122

British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author 1942–2018

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

“The English have loudly and openly told the world that skis and dogs are unusable in these regions and that fur clothes are rubbish. We shall see — we shall see.”

Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) Norwegian polar researcher, who was the first to reach the South Pole

citation needed

“Let a thin, flat metal plate be heated… so that the temperature T is not uniform… clamp or otherwise constrain the plate to keep it from buckling… [and] remain [reasonably] flat… Make simple geometric measurements… with a short metal rule, which has a certain coefficient of expansion c… What is the geometry of the plate as revealed by the results of those measurements? …[T]he geometry will not turn out to be Euclidean, for the rule will expand more in the hotter regions… [T]he plate will seem to have a negative curvature K… the kind of structure exhibited… in the neighborhood of a "saddle point."”

Howard P. Robertson (1903–1961) American mathematician and physicist

Geometry as a Branch of Physics (1949)

“I really can't believe what a state the Pyramids are in. I thought they had flat rendered sides, but when you get up close, you see how they are just giant boulders balanced on top of each other, like a massive game of Jenga that has got out of hand.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Source: An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington

“We have come one hundred miles and both the tortoise and the hare have passed us laughing.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

“You told us to leave you in the desert, because you planned to start a new life as cactus," Catarina said, her voice flat. "Then you conjured up tiny needles and threw them at us. With pinpoint accuracy.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

“In there?'
She nodded.
'You want us to go into the tortoise?'
Another nod.
'It's alive.'
Another nod.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

“It is excellent / To have a giant's strenght / But it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant

(Isabella)”

William Shakespeare Measure for Measure

Source: Measure for Measure

“I think, the people around home are very supportive to us and those are the people who really matter to us, our close friends and close family and I think if they feel you are doing the right thing you can only be true to yourself and you sort of have to ignore a lot of what's said, obviously take it on board, but you have to be yourself really and that's how I have stuck by it really.”

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (1982) Wife of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge

First post-engagement interview (2010)

“Use "entropy" and you can never lose a debate, von Neumann told Shannon - because no one really knows what "entropy" is.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part One, Entropy, Randomness, Disorder, Uncertainty, p. 57
Fortune's Formula (2005)

“What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”

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Stephen Hawking 122

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