“There was only one thing of which he could be certain now. Boredom would not be a serious problem for a considerable time to come.”

— Arthur C. Clarke, book The City and the Stars

Source: The City and the Stars (1956), Chapter 11 (pp. 77-78)

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Arthur C. Clarke207

British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, u… 1917–2008

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: The Red Dice

“Some have thought that Wittgenstein's lectures were only for his friends and favourites. In fact he would admit anyone to his lectures. He required, however, that they should attend continuously and for a considerable period of time. He would not allow anyone to come for only one or two meetings. To one such request he replied, 'My lectures are not for tourists.”

Norman Malcolm (1911–1990) American philosopher

Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, 1958

“Now if anyone were reminded about the inconceivable by the fact of existence at all constantly, he would sooner or later have the perception that there may be inconceivable considerations which are inconceivably more important than any conceivable consideration could be.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

Advice to Clever Children (1981)

“There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up

Source: The Summing Up (1938), Ch. 5, p. 12 http://books.google.com/books?id=2hNbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22There+is+only+one+thing+about+which+I+am+certain+and+this+is%22&pg=PA12#v=onepage- 13 http://books.google.com/books?id=2hNbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22that+there+is+very+little+about+which+one+can+be+certain%22&pg=PA13#v=onepage

“You become a serious programmer by going through a stage where you are fully aware of the degree to which you know the specification, meaning both the explicit and the tacit specification of your language and of your problem. "Hey, it works most of the time" is the very antithesis of a serious programmer, and certain languages can only support code like that.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Implementational Portability http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/d10b5da103312c35 (Usenet article). <br class="br">Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

“If there be one thing certain, to my mind it is this. That if the people of this country in great numbers were to become adherents of either Communism or Fascism there could only be one end to it. And that one end would be civil war.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast from London (6 March 1934); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 23
1934
Context: When one is young one is always in a hurry, and it may well be to-day that those two alien plants— for they neither have their roots in England— Communism and Fascism, may appeal to many of you. This is a free country. You can support either creed, and you can support it in safety, but I want to put this to you. If there be one thing certain, to my mind it is this. That if the people of this country in great numbers were to become adherents of either Communism or Fascism there could only be one end to it. And that one end would be civil war.

“Patience and boredom are closely related. Boredom, a certain kind of boredom, is really impatience. You don't like the way things are, they aren't interesting enough for you, so you deccide- and boredom is a decision-that you are bored.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

“All the time, he hoped they would understand that his arrogance masked only shyness—or did he hope that it was his shyness which masked arrogance? He did not know.
Who could presume to know? The one quality holds much of the other. Both refuse to come forward and share.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“A Kind of Artistry” p. 185
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“These considerations illustrate clearly that one of the problems is that of conceiving means for producing nuclides of sufficiently high mass numbers with half-lives long enough for chemical identification. Thus, the serious problem is again the paucity of starting materials.”

Glenn T. Seaborg (1912–1999) American scientist

"The Transuranium Elements : Present Status" Nobel Lecture (12 December 1951) http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1951/seaborg-lecture.html <br class="br">Context: I suppose that I should say a few words with respect to the possibility for future production and identification of additional transuranium elements, especially in view of the possibility of their production by heavy-ion bombardment of transuranium elements. As an aid to such a program the radioactive properties can be estimated, as I have already indicated, on the assumption of a smooth nuclear energy surface and the systematics of radioactivity. Again, I must emphasize that such considerations are negated in the event that a stable subshell of 148 neutrons should be found to exist, and this must be regarded as a definite possibility. It is interesting to note that our considerations on the systematics of spontaneous fission28 indicate that this method of decay will not compete seriously with radioactive decay until the region just beyond element 100. … These considerations illustrate clearly that one of the problems is that of conceiving means for producing nuclides of sufficiently high mass numbers with half-lives long enough for chemical identification. Thus, the serious problem is again the paucity of starting materials.

“Only after one has obtained knowledge of the history, is he fully competent to deal with present problems, and then he is less certain than ever that any of the ordinary problems of life are particularly Negro problems.”

Richard R. Wright Jr. (1878–1967)

Wright Jr. 87 Years Behind the Black Curtain: An Autobiography. 1965

“There was only one thing of which he could be certain now. Boredom would not be a serious problem for a considerable time to come.”

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