People From Missouri

"I must remember the things I have seen. I must keep them fresh in memory, see them again in my mind's eye, live through them again and again in my thoughts. And most of all, I must make good use of them in tomorrow's life."

"Science is the one human activity that is truly progressive."

"If the apparent magnitudes of the nebulae are corrected merely for the effect of the red-shift in diminishing the energy of their observed light, we have seen that Hubble claims that the system is uniformly spread out in space. If, however, the nebulae are receding, an additional dimming factor arises, and the corresponding correction for distance when incorporated in the calculation destroys the homogeneity. Instead, the number of nebulae per unit volume of space now appears to increase as we recede towards the confines of the visible universe. Rightly or wrongly, Hubble maintains that such a picture would imply that we were in a privileged position in the universe, being in the region lease densely populated with nebulae. On these, and other grounds, he is inclined, therefore, to reject the Doppler-interpretation of the red-shifts and to regard the nebulae as stationary."

"I chucked the law for astronomy, and I knew that even if I were second-rate or third-rate, it was astronomy that mattered."

"She deserved the Nobel Prize for her work."

"We do not know why we are born into the world, but we can try to find out what sort of a world it is — at least in its physical aspects."

"The whole thing is so much bigger than I am, and I can't understand it, so I just trust myself to it; and forget about it."

"...there must be no favored location in the universe, no center, no boundary; all must see the universe alike. And, in order to ensure this situation, the cosmologist postulates spatial isotropy and spatial homogeneity."

"The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons."

"Eventually, we reach the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows and search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial."

"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science."

"A for which the entrance area, covered with a very large number of randomly distributed pinholes, is 50 per cent open is shown to be a very effective way of forming images of a complex of s. A simple statistical trick is used to reduce the multitudinous overlapping images to a single image. Less than forty detected photons are needed to form an image of a single star."

"I have long believed that an experimentalist should not be unduly inhibited by theoretical untidyness. If he insists in having every last theoretical T crossed before he starts his research the chances are that he will never do a significant experiment. And the more significant and fundamental the experiment the more theoretical uncertainty may be tolerated. By contrast, the more important and difficult the experiment the more that experimental care is warranted. There is no point in attempting a half-hearted experiment with an inadequate apparatus."

"In Heisenberg's , the transferred to the particle by the scattered photon makse the particle's momentum uncertain. It is shown that momentum is also transferred when the lack of a scattered photon is used to discover that the particle is absent from the field of view of the microscope (i.e., located outside the light beam). This apparent paradox, a transfer of momentum and/or energy to a missing particle by a light beam (without the scattering of a photon), is discused and "resolved" using quantum measurement theory."

"Is the earth affected by its cosmological setting in the universe? It is to be presumed that the solar system was molded at its birth by galactic conditions which in turn reflected the primordial chaos of the primitive galaxy. However, we are not concerned here with questions of this type, interesting though they are, but rather with a problem of even grander proportions: Is there an effect upon the earth, here and now, of the distribution of matter in the universe? As the universe expands, as distant matter moves away from us, are there effects upon the earth of this changing distribution of matter?"

"Sanya, Knight of the Cross: There is, I think, humor here which does not translate well from English into sanity."

"Life, Tavi reflected, seldom makes a gift of what one expects or plans for."

"Open eyes are of little use when the mind behind them is closed."

"Bridges are a troll's specialty. Whether because of some magic or just because of aptitude, you never get across the bridge without facing the troll. That's life, I guess."

"I'd never seen anyone go truly, old-school berserkergang, but that scream...It was like hearing an echo rolling down through the centuries from an ancient world, a more savage world, now lost to the mists of time. And suddenly I had no trouble at all believing her age."

"Spelunking is dangerous enough without adding in anything that could be described with the word "ravening"."

"The next time you interfere with me, more than smoke will interfere with you."

"Thomas Raith: Harry's a wizard. A genuine, honest-to-good-ness wizard. He's Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket. He'll spit in the eye of gods and demons alike if he thinks it needs to be done, and to hell with the consequences-and yet somehow my little brother manages to remain a decent human being."

"Harry Dresden: Discussing a problem with yourself is almost never a good way to secure a divergent viewpoint."

"Harry Dresden: Death is only frightening from the near side."

"Harry Dresden: Boobs are near the center of the universe, until you turn twenty-five or so. Which is also when young men’s auto insurance rates go down. This is not a coincidence."

"Sanya, Knight of the Cross: Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka."

"Harry Dresden: There’s power in the night. There’s terror in the darkness. Despite all our accumulated history, learning, and experience, we remember. We remember times when we were too small to reach the light switch on the wall, and when the darkness itself was enough to make us cry out in fear. Get a good ways out from civilization-say, miles and miles away on a lightless lake-and the darkness is there, waiting. Twilight means more than just time to call the children in from playing outside. Fading light means more than just the end of another day. Night is when terrible things emerge from their sleep and seek soft flesh and hot blood. Night is when unseen beings with no regard for what our people have built and no place in what we have deemed the natural order look in at our world from outside, and think dark and alien thoughts. And sometimes, just sometimes, they do things."

"Harry Dresden: The U.S. isn’t a perfect place, but it’s better than most people have managed to come up with. And all my stuff is there."

"Harry Dresden: You’re in America now. Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you’d prefer. Anastasia Luccio: Did you bring a sandwich? Harry Dresden: What do I look like, Kissinger?"

"Harry Dresden: I can't believe I'm about to say this. So think real careful about where this is coming from: Have you people ever considered talking when you've got a problem?"

"Harry Dresden: That's Doctor Smart-ass. I didn't spend eight years in insult college to be called Mister."

"Harry Dresden: You rush a miracle worker, you get lousy miracles!"

"Marcone: In my judgment, my buildings are less likely to burn to the ground during one of your visits if you are disoriented from being treated like a sultan."

"Harry Dresden: Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another."

"Harry Dresden: Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it."

"Harry Dresden: We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind-graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens."

"Harry Dresden: Tonight you will be visited by three spirits, the ghosts of indictment past, present and future. They will teach you the true meaning of "you are still a scumbag criminal.""

"Harry Dresden: We're all human. We're all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain."

"Harry Dresden: Murphy had found a spot on the street, which made me wonder if she didn't have some kind of magical talent after all. Only some kind of precognitive ESP could have gotten us a parking space on the street, in the shadow of a building, with both of us in sight of the apartment building's entrance."

"Harry Dresden: A little humiliation and ego deflation, now and then, is good for apprentices. Mine sighed miserably."

"Harry Dresden: Keep in mind that this appears in the same book of the Bible that approves the death sentence for a child who curses his parents, owners of oxen who injure someone through the owner's negligence, anybody who works or kindles a fire on Sunday, and anyone who has sex with an animal."

"Harry Dresden: Many things are not as they seem: The worst things in life never are."

"Harry Dresden: I don't care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family."

"Harry Dresden: You can never tell how someone is going to handle power — not until you hand it to them and see what they do with it."

"Harry Dresden: Dresden Taxidermy. You snuff it, we'll stuff it."

"Harry Dresden: Blood leaves no stain on a Warden's cloak."

"Malcolm Dresden: Son. Everyone dies alone. That's what it is. It's a door. It's one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone." His fingers squeezed me tight. "But it doesn't mean you've got to be alone before you go through the door. And believe me, you aren't alone on the other side.""

"Carlos Ramirez: Everyone else who lets me ride on their dinosaur calls me Carlos."

"Quintus Cassius: I have dreamed of this night, boy. [he purred, and gently stroked the side of my face with the baseball bat.] Quintus Cassius: In my day, we would say that revenge is sweet. But times have changed. How do you say...? "Payback is a bitch.""