If it turns out that all this time we have merely been studying the programming of a cosmic planetarium, then that would merely mean that we have been studying a smaller portion of reality than we thought. So what? Such things have happened many times in the history of science, as our horizons have expanded beyond the Earth to include the solar system, our Galaxy, other galaxies, clusters of galaxies and so on, and, of course, parallel universes.

— David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality

…a person who only develops his body lives a life that is just as unbalanced as someone who only uses his head. Both extremes are an expression of a warped way of life.

— Jostein Gaarder, Paulette Møller (Translator), Sophie’s World

The challenge of learning in the beginning is that you don’t know what to do. The challenge of learning in the end is that you think you already know what to do.

— Scott Young, Ultralearning

the lawgivers and founders of mankind, starting from the most ancient and going on to the Lycurguses, the Solons, the Muhammads, the Napoleons, and so forth, that all of them to a man were criminals, from the fact alone that in giving a new law they thereby violated the old one, held sacred by society and passed down from their fathers, and they certainly did not stop at shedding blood either, if it happened that blood (sometimes quite innocent and shed valiantly for the old law) could help them.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

When our life crackles and sparks like a torch, we curse the necessity of spending eight hours in useless sleep. When we have been deprived of everything, when we have been deprived of hope, then bless you, fourteen hours of sleep!

— Roman Gelperin, On Rotting Prison Straw