If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.
John Galsworthy
Category: Quote of the Day
Aphorisms, proverbs, wise sayings and other witty, pithy stuff
07OCT2021 – Quote of the Day
Philosophy is written in this grand book — I mean the universe — which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.
Galileo Galilei
06OCT2021 – Quote of the Day
My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?
Galileo Galilei
05OCT2021 – Quote of the Day
I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.
Galileo Galilei
04OCT2021 – Quote of the Day
It does not pay a man to exist until the age of Methuselah by making his days indolent and useless. The more this is reflected upon, the more the reflector will desire to undertake meaningful and useful actions, the more they will have lived.
Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great)
03OCT2021 – Quote of the Day
I wanted to have a water jet in my garden: Euler calculated the force of the wheels necessary to raise the water to a reservoir, from where it should fall back through channels, finally spurting out in Sans Souci. My mill was carried out geometrically and could not raise a mouthful of water closer than fifty paces from the reservoir. Vanity of vanities! Vanity of geometry!
Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great)
(Every engineer recognizes this as the lament of a dissatisfied client! – photog)
02OCT2021 – Quote of the Day
Rascals, would you live forever? (To hesitant guards at the battle of Kolin, 18 June 1757)
Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great)
01OCT2021 – Quote of the Day
“My people and I,” he said, “have come to an agreement which satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.”
Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great)
30SEP2021 – Quote of the Day
Truth to tell, treaties are only oaths of deception and faithlessness. The jurisprudence of sovereigns is customarily the law of the strongest.
Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great)
29SEP2021 – Quote of the Day
Of all Prussia’s neighbours the Russian Empire is the most dangerous, both from its power and its geographical position, and those who rule Prussia after me should cultivate the friendship of those barbarians, because they are able to ruin Prussia altogether through the immense number of their mounted troops, whilst one cannot repay them for the damage which they may do because of the poverty of that part of Russia which is nearest to Prussia, and through which one has to pass in order to get into the Ukraine.
Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great)