"What are the most important problems in your field? Why aren't you working on them?” "Everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people who were no smarter than you.” “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothings going to change. It's not.” “We all do our duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose.” “We live in a world in which courage is in less supply than genius.” "All I have in this world is my balls and my word and I don't break them for no one." “Critique by creating.” "My life is my message." "The world is a museum of passion projects." "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." "Do, or do not. There is no try." "And I took that personally." "Never tell me the odds." "The fearful are caught as often as the bold." "If our goal is to write poetry, the only way we are likely to be _any_ good is to try to be as great as the best." “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.” “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” "If you hit a wrong note, it's the next note you play that determines if it's good or bad.” “Self-esteem is the reputation that you have with yourself.” “Your job throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.” "Relax for the same result." "You're gonna need a bigger boat.” "There are no stupid questions, only stupid people.” "Just keep swimming.” "The only thing to fear is fear itself." "Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about." "Almost none of the message is the message. Almost all of the message is the timing." "The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” "Integrity needs no rules." “Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.” "Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later and then you still have to decide what to do.” "The only thing people will remember about you is whether you were there for them in their moment of need." “I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.” “What convinces is conviction” “A leader is a dealer in hope.” “Any man who must say, I am the king, is no true king.” "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." "If your work is unfulfilling, the money will be too." "Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten." "It is said that one should keep one’s allies within view, and one’s enemies within reach... But what of friends? … A friend need not be kept within sight or within reach. A friend must be allowed the freedom to find and follow his own path. If one is fortunate, those paths will for a time join. But if paths separate, it is comforting to know that a friend still graces the universe with his skills, and his viewpoint, and his present. For if one is remembered by a friend, one is never truly gone." "We humans are all the same, every last one of us. For some it’s drink, some it’s women, some even religion, family, the king, dreams, children, power, all of us had to spend our lives drunk on something, else we’d have no cause to keep pushing on. Everyone was a slave to something." “Never forget what you are, the rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you.” "Stress comes from ignoring things you shouldn't be ignoring" “I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.” "Only boring people get bored" "'The Answer to the Great Question Of Life, the Universe and Everything, is forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm." "If you're so smart, why aren't you happy? Turns out you're fucking stupid." "If you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is good." "The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." "Above all, do not lie to yourself." “The only difference between medicine and poison is the dosage.” "The mathematician does not study pure mathematics because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it and he delights in it because it is beautiful." "Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics." "Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity." "As time goes on it becomes increasingly evident that the rules which the mathematician finds interesting are the same as those which nature has chosen." "Young man, in mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them." "I love my films, I make them for me; Everyone else is invited." "Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details." “There are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job.’” "Work with the garage door up." “If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!’” “It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.” "Plans are worthless, but planning is indispensable" "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." "For every thousand people hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the roots." “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” “A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.” "Public services are never better performed than when their reward comes in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them." "It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it." “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” "Big brother is watching." “Your mother was programmed by biology to love you the moment she laid her eyes on you. Just because she had no choice doesn't mean her love wasn't real” “I have heard it said that evil is simply a point of view. The villain is always the hero in his own story. And the definitions of wrong and right ever shift on the inconstant tides of human morality. But can such measures be said to apply to me? I am clarity. I am necessity. I am inevitability. But am I evil? But say then, for a moment, that this is also evil. And say that I choose this evil to spare others that same choice. This must be done. Does that not make me good?” “You fucking doughnut of course you don't microwave a salad.” "The schoolboy beginning Greek grammar cannot look forward to his adult enjoyment of Sophocles as a lover looks forward to marriage or a general to victory. He has to begin by working for marks, or to escape punishment, or to please his parents, or, at best, in the hope of a future good which he cannot at present imagine or desire. His position bears a certain resemblance to that of the mercenary; the reward he is going to get will, in actual fact, be a natural or proper reward, but he will not know that till he has got it. He gets it gradually; enjoyment creeps in upon the mere drudgery, and nobody could point to a day or an hour when the one ceased and the other began. But it is just in so far as he approaches the reward that he becomes able to desire it for its own sake; indeed, the power of so desiring it is itself a preliminary reward." "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor, and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." “A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this the purpose of the bee's existence. Another, observing the migration of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension. All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of historic characters and nations.” "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." "I'll be back."