Linus Torvalds, Geek of the Week Interview, 2008-07-17, Torvalds, Linus, 2008-07-17 http://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/geek-of-the-week/linus-torvalds,-geek-of-the-week/,
2000s, 2008
“You see, I went on with this research just the way it led me. That is the only way I ever heard of true research going. I asked a question, devised some method of obtaining an answer, and got — a fresh question. Was this possible or that possible? You cannot imagine what this means to an investigator, what an intellectual passion grows upon him! You cannot imagine the strange, colourless delight of these intellectual desires!”
Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 14: Doctor Moreau Explains
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H. G. Wells 142
English writer 1866–1946Related quotes
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, p. 63
Philosophical Remarks (1991), Part III (27), pp.66-67
Attributed from posthumous publications
Source: 1980s, That Benediction is Where You Are (1985), p. 63
Context: Are we wasting our lives? By that word “wasting” we mean dissipating our energy in various ways, dissipating it in specialized professions. Are we wasting our whole existence, our life? If you are rich, you may say, “Yes, I have accumulated a lot of money, it has been a great pleasure.” Or if you have a certain talent, that talent is a danger to a religious life. Talent is a gift, a faculty, an aptitude in a particular direction, which is specialization. Specialization is a fragmentary process. So you must ask yourself whether you are wasting your life. You may be rich, you may have all kinds of faculties, you may be a specialist, a great scientist or a businessman, but at the end of your life has all that been a waste? All the travail, all the sorrow, all the tremendous anxiety, insecurity, the foolish illusions that man has collected, all his gods, all his saints and so on — have all that been a waste? You may have power, position, but at the end of it — what? Please, this is a serious question that you must ask yourself. Another cannot answer this question for you.
“If you ask me a question I don't know, I'm not going to answer.”
What Time Is It? You Mean Now?: Advice for Life from the Zennest Master of Them All, Simon and Schuster, 2003, ISBN 0743244532, p. 101.
Yogiisms
The President's reasoning for telling reporters in the Oval Office that the current Defense Secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, would be staying on, although Bush had already selected potential replacements. Given at a news conference http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/11/20061108-2.html (November 8, 2006)
2000s, 2006
Religion and Science (1935), Ch. IX: Science of Ethics.
1930s
Variant: "What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know." (Attributed to Russell in Ted Peters' Cosmos As Creation: Theology and Science in Consonance [1989], p. 14, with a note that it was "told [to] a BBC audience [earlier this century]").
“Imagine no limitations; decide what's right and desirable before you decide
what's possible.”