Some of my favorite quotes.

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

My highschool yearbook quote.

"Man is the only animal that refuses to be what he is." - Albert Camus, Carnets

Like my favorite song, America’s A Horse with No Name, it’s about something different everytime I hear it. Maybe that’s what Camus was getting at…

"Someday is not a day of the week." - Janet Dailey

I hate motivational quotes; they are too often unbearably corny. For some reason, this one succeeds for me.

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche’s most relatable quote.

"In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. [...] In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore." - Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

My generation’s curse.

"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." - George Orwell, 1984

I often worry that I think in too-partisan-a-manner. I try and remind myself of this quote when thinking about the state of our nation.

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old condition, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new." - Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

It is hard to try something new, and even harder to make a living out of it. A career that didn’t exist 15 years ago is a scary one to pick up.

"And blood-black nothingness began to spin

A system of cells interlinked within

Cells interlinked within cells interlinked

Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct

Against the dark, a tall white fountain played."

- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire: A Poem in Four Cantos

… interlinked.

If all of human knowledge, everything that’s known, is believed to be an enormous hierarchic structure, then the high country of the mind is found at the uppermost reaches of this structure in the most general, the most abstract considerations of all. Few people travel here. There’s no real profit to be made from wandering through it, yet like this high country of the material world all around us, it has its own austere beauty that to some people makes the hardships of traveling through it seem worthwhile. - Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Sometimes I wonder if I myself ever have questions and ideas that belong to this high country. Probably not, but maybe.

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Isaac Asimov

A measles outbreak in 2025.

"Scientia potentia est" - Thomas Hobbes

“Knowledge is power” is probably the overarching theme of humanity. The accomplishments between YBC 7289 and the LHC are everything great about being human.

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." - Seneca the Younger

As if anyone can say if religion is “true” or “false” Seneca. I still like the church and the state seperated though.

"Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do." - Donald Knuth

I heard this quote after reading the book $A=B$ by Marko Petkovsek, Herbert Wilf and Doron Zeilberger. I am still amazed that something like simplifying finite sums has an algorithm. What a time to be alive!