Agnostics

"Without encroaching upon grounds appertaining to the theologian and the philosopher, the domain of natural sciences is surely broad enough to satisfy the wildest ambition of its devotees. In other departments of human life and interest, true progress is rather an article of faith than a rational belief; but in science a retrograde movements is, from the nature of the case, almost impossible. Increasing knowledge brings with it increasing power, and great as are the triumphs of the present century, we may well believe that they are but a foretaste of what discovery and invention have yet in store for mankind. … The work may be hard, and the discipline severe; but the interest never fails, and great is the privilege of achievement."

"The history of this paper suggests that highly speculative investigations, especially by an unknown author, are best brought before the world through some other channel than a scientific society, which naturally hesitates to admit into its printed records matter of uncertain value. Perhaps one may go further, and say that a young author who believes himself capable of great things would usually do well to secure the favourable recognition of the scientific world by work whose scope is limited, and whose value is easily judged, before embarking upon higher flights."

"The only merit of which I personally am conscious was that of having pleased myself by my studies, and any results that may be due to my researches were owing to the fact that it has been a pleasure for me to become a physicist."

"I write only for my shadow which is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it."

"The Irish were actually Iranians who migrated to Western Europe, tried to change the word "Iran", removed "an" and replaced it with "eland" and became "Ireland". Germanics were Iranians who migrated from Kerman province to the center of Europe."

"In life there are certain sores that, like a canker, gnaw at the soul in solitude and diminish it. (opening line)"

"Their Jewish God is heavy, Cruel and implacable. He always orders to kill and plunder people, and before the day of Resurrection, He sends Mr. Messiah so he can get his people's income and slaughter them so much that his horse's knees surge in blood."

"In this base world, full of poverty and misery, for the first time I thought a ray of sunshine had shone on my life. But alas, it was not a sunbeam, rather it was only a transient beam, a shooting star, which appeared to me in the likeness of a woman or an angel."

"It is true that the Arabs were too lowly to do such insolence, this sedition was started by Jewish spies and they created (Islam) with their own hands to overthrow the civilization of Iran and Rome and they achieved their goal, but like the staff of Moses that He turned into a dragon and Moses himself was afraid of him, this seventy-headed dragon is devouring the world"

"It is said that their souls (animals) are inferior. Yes, but in the end, like us, they feel pain and joy. Their inferiority determines for us the duty of the elder brother, not the right of tyranny and oppression."

"Everyone who eats meat must kill the animal himself. Because carnivorous animals do not take a assistant, or at least presence walk and spend an hour of their lives watching this beautiful meal and see how these delicious foods are prepared for them."

"As long as we do not suffocate the natural emotions of our hearts by force, it is clear that there is a feeling of hatred in humans for killing and pain of other animals, and it is also clear that when all people are forced to kill the animals they eat with their own hands, most of them turn to vegetarianism."

"It should be noted that vegetarianism is still a source of ridicule for those who do not know the truth; How easily we laughed at our ancestors, the day will come when future generations will laugh at our superstitions."

"Finally I realized that I was a demi-god and that I was beyond all the low, petty desires of mankind. I felt the eternal flux within me. What is eternity? Eternity for me was playing hide-and-seek with that whore on the banks of the Suren river; it was a momentary closing of my eyes when I hid my head in her lap."

"If the human race is to reach its peak of development one day, it will be in a natural environment with plant food. As cannibalism and artificial civilization corrupt him and drag him to the abyss of nothingness. Unless a humane race and a non-native whose life is governed by the laws of nature succeed him, otherwise his race will be shamefully extinguished."

"Compare that to a fruit shop adorned with pleasant, lush colors that smell like pomegranate. Compare apples, oranges, cherries, peaches, grapes and melons, and the vivid colors of various vegetables to the butcher shop, the hanging heart and intestines, the severed corpses, the split bellies, the broken legs that hang, and drop blood dripping from it."

"I was growing inward incessantly; like an animal that hibernates during the wintertime, I could hear other peoples' voices with my ears; my own voice, however, I could hear only in my throat. The loneliness and the solitude that lurked behind me were like a condensed, thick, eternal night, like one of those nights with a dense, persistent, sticky darkness which waits to pounce on unpopulated cities filled with lustful and vengeful dreams."

"I was not in full control of myself, and it seemed that I knew her name from before. The evil in her eyes, her color, her scent and her movements were all familiar to me. It was as though my souls, in the life before this, in the world of imagination, had bordered on her soul and that both souls, of the same essence and substance, were destined for union. I must have lived this life very close to her. I had no desire to touch her; the invisible beams that emanated from our bodies and mingled were sufficient for me. Isn't this terrifying experience which seemed so familiar to met quite the same as the feelings of two lovers who feel that they have known each other before and that a mysterious relationship has previously existed between them? Was it possible that someone else could affect me? The dry, repulsive and ominous laughter of the old man, however, tore our bonds asunder."

"What relationship could exist between the lives of the fools and healthy rabble who were well, who slept well, who performed the sexual act well, who had never felt the wings of death on their face every moment—what relationship could exist between them and one like me who has arrived at the end of his rope and who knows that he will pass away gradually and tragically?"

"My life appeared to me as unnatural, uncertain and incredible as the design on the pencase I am using at this moment. It seems that a painter who has been possessed, perhaps a perfectionist, has painted the cover of this pencase. Often, when I look at this design, it seems familiar; perhaps it is because of this design that I write or perhaps this design makes me write."

"What is love? For the rabble love is a kind of variety, a transient vulgarity; the rabble's conception of love is best found in their obscene ditties, in prostitution and in the foul idioms they use when they are halfway sober, such as "shoving the donkey's foreleg in mud," or "putting dust on the head." My love for her, however, was of a totally different kind. I knew her from ancient times—strange slanted eyes, a narrow, half-open mouth, a subdued quiet voice. She was the embodiment of all my distant, painful memories among which I sought what I was deprived of, what belonged to me but somehow I was denied. Was I deprived forever?"

"In many different fields, empirical phenomena appear to obey a certain general law, which can be called the Law of Large Numbers. This law states that the ratios of numbers derived from the observation of a very large number of similar events remain practically constant, provided that these events are governed partly by constant factors and partly by variable factors whose variations are irregular and do not cause a systematic change in a definite direction."

"That which can affect our senses in any manner whatever, is termed matter."

"La vie n'est bonne qu'à deux choses : à faire des mathématiques et à les professer. (The only two good things in life are doing mathematics and teaching it.)"

"It has been reported that when Michelson was asked towards the end of his life, why he had devoted such a large fraction of his time, to the measurement of the velocity of light, he replied "it was so much fun"."

"Relativity was born of an epistemological shock; it was born of the "failure" of the Michelson experiment. ...Is so little required to "shake" the universe of spatiality? Can a single experiment... annihilate... two or three centuries of rational thought? Yes, a single decimal sufficed, as our poet Henri de Regnier would say, to "make all nature sing." ...The Michelson experiment, at first so particular in character, will form the basis of the most far-reaching generalization."

"It appears, from all that precedes, reasonably certain that if there be any relative motion between the earth and the luminiferous ether, it must be small; quite small enough entirely to refute Fresnel's explanation of aberration."

"Before entering into these details, however, it may be well to reply to the very natural question: What would be the use of such extreme refinement in the science of measurement? Very briefly and in general terms the answer would be that in this direction the greater part of all future discovery must lie. The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Nevertheless, it has been found that there are apparent exceptions to most of these laws, and this is particularly true when the observations are pushed to a limit, i.e., whenever the circumstances of experiment are such that extreme cases can be examined. Such examination almost surely leads, not to the overthrow of the law, but to the discovery of other facts and laws whose action produces the apparent exceptions.As instances of such discoveries, which are in most cases due to the increasing order of accuracy made possible by improvements in measuring instruments, may be mentioned: first, the departure of actual gases from the simple laws of the so-called perfect gas, one of the practical results being the liquefaction of air and all known gases; second, the discovery of the velocity of light by astronomical means, depending on the accuracy of telescopes and of astronomical clocks; third, the determination of distances of stars and the orbits of double stars, which depend on measurements of the order of accuracy of one-tenth of a second—an angle which may be represented as that which a pin's head subtends at a distance of a mile. But perhaps the most striking of such instances are the discovery of a new planet by observations of the small irregularities noticed by Leverier in the motions of the planet Uranus, and the more recent brilliant discovery by Lord Rayleigh of a new element in the atmosphere through the minute but unexplained anomalies found in weighing a given volume of nitrogen. Many instances might be cited, but these will suffice to justify the statement that "our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals." It follows that every means which facilitates accuracy in measurement is a possible factor in a future discovery, and this will, I trust, be a sufficient excuse for bringing to your notice the various methods and results which form the subject matter of these lectures."

"Now, the velocity of wave propagation can be seen, without the aid of any mathematical analysis, to depend on the elasticity of the medium and its density; for we can see that if a medium is highly elastic the disturbance would be propagated at a great speed."

"While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice. It is here that the science of measurement shows its importance — where quantitative work is more to be desired than qualitative work. An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."

"It is... striking that the Michelson laboratory was, properly speaking, cosmic. There, the most artificial physics imaginable was referred to the space of the world. The decimal which they wished to reveal by means of the interferometer, the decimal which is of the order of three-fourths of the wavelength of a vibration of light, was related to the orbital speed of the earth, a speed of the order of eighteen miles per second. The precision of such a question... this attempt to experience the immobility of space in its cosmic significance, ought to set the metaphysicians thinking who study the place of man in the world; if only these metaphysicians would give their attention to the lengthy discursive processes which lead science to build new intuitions."

"This has given me a feeling of confidence, which I might not have had otherwise."

"After I read a script about three times, it sinks into my head. With Harry Potter, it took about six times because it was a lot bigger."

"(On considering himself as a heartthrob) Personally I can't see it, but if other people can, fine. Cool!"

"When I go back to school everyone asks a lot of questions. Then, after about a week, when I've answered everything, we get back to normal"

"(about Math) Too many little numbers on one page!"

"I once had a friend call me (Harry) by accident. If there's another person in the room called Harry and somebody shouts their name I do respond slightly, which is embarrassing. But no one has ever said it in the throws of passion. That would be the end of that session. Go now!"

"Me and Harry (Potter) are not very good with women. I've got better now. But I think any man whoever says he has never had an awkward moment with a girl is a liar. He's either a liar or he's delusional."

"It's good to be back filming. I just put on my glasses and then I became Harry again."

"(upon seeing the movie) I'm a bit nervous about whether people will like it, but I've seen it, and I'm sure they will. It's really good - it's quite scary, it's quite emotional. Even I cried and I don't cry easily! I cried at the end credits when my name came up, and I was, like, Oh my God! I can't believe that's my name! I've met so many people since we started filming and it's been wonderful. I've progressed so far and changed so much since the beginning. It's been like a real journey."

"I was like every other teenager in that sense... I think I started very early— before my teens. But not when I was on set."

"Fans are really important for me. And if they take pains to write me, it's the minimum that I answer myself."

"There have been people who have tried to exploit me. You get chancers out there who just want to make a quick buck, but as long as you tune into them and who they are … The best thing I've learned is, if you're going out, never go out alone - you leave yourself vulnerable. If you've got someone else there you trust, they can say, be wary of that person. I probably used to be too trusting of people."

"I'm very proud of being Jewish. It means I have a good work ethic, and you get Jewish humour and you're allowed to tell Jewish jokes."

"Transgender women are women, any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I."

"I'm thrilled of the acceptance I get abroad. The people are so hearty, warm and grateful and I feel privileged having seen so many countries and some of the greatest monuments"

"Some people think I’m gay when I meet them, which I think is awesome. It’s always good to keep them guessing. I don’t go on any blogs or chats or anything, but my friends are demons for them, and apparently someone said: ‘Daniel Radcliffe is gay. He’s got a gay face!’ I really don’t know what a gay face is!"

"I'm lucky enough to have a job that I love, and a relatively down-to-earth life."

"Ron's funnier than Robin Williams. The hard thing is not to laugh when the camera is rolling."

"The one piece of advice I would give to any actor is, if you want to go out on the street without being recognised, without even being looked at, go out with a 6ft 8in beautiful transsexual. No one gives you a second glance. Especially when you're 5ft 5in."