"The only mystery about the cat is why it ever decided to become a domesticated animal"

"Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, somethimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturbe them."

"This place makes Mayberry look like a think tank."

"[F]or academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit."

"What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read."

"There are, however, people in this world who seldom pick up a newspaper, people who, when watching television, sneer in displeasure and change channels at the first glimpse of an anchorperson. While such willfully uninformed citizens are rare, emerging from seclusion only to serve on juries in trials of great national significance, they do exist."

"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect."

"A reasonable probability is the only certainty."

"What happens depends on our way of observing it or on the fact that we observe it."

"My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we *can* suppose."

"Do not commit your poems to pages alone, sing them I pray you."

"That all our knowledge begins with experience, there is indeed no doubt....but although our knowledge originates WITH experience, it does not all arise OUT OF experience."

"Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means....[A] machine might be imagined where the assumptions were put in at one end, while the theorems came out at the other, like the legendary Chicago machine where the pigs go in alive and come out transformed into hams and sausages. No more than these machines need the mathematician know what he does."

"He who will not economize will have to agonize."

"Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory."

"Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement."

"Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul."

"It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condenced, the deeper they burn."