The thinker residing over the gates of hell—one deeply intuned to the unnaturalnesses of existence and experience.

“A similar inquiry is made by those who inquire into the ‘number of existents’; for they inquire whether the ultimate constituents of ‘existing things’ are on or many, and if many whether a finite or an infinite plurality. So they are inquiring whether the principle or element is one or many.”

— Aristotle (350BC), Physics (§1.2:315-16)

“Like a river flows surely to the sea, darling so it goes, some things were meant to be.”

— Jean Florian (c.1784), “Pleasure of Love” in: Celestine (Ѻ); sung by Elvis Presley (1961) in Blue Hawaii (Ѻ)

“You need to have knowledge of thermodynamics before making love, because things ‘heat up’ upon re-entry.”

— Just Paul (2017), Tweet (Ѻ) via @TwitiCulture, Oct 25

“It would be hard to introduce politics or morality into a chemical thermodynamics class (without veering off topic).”

— Gerard Harbison (2016), “Tweet (Ѻ) to @dfreelon and @kevinnr”, Aug 4

“We function better if there is no plan B.”

— Arnold Schwarzenegger (c.2018) (Ѻ)

“He who is firm in will moulds the world to himself.”

— Goethe (c.1810)

“The first business of a man of science is to proclaim the truth as he finds it; and let the world adjust itself as best it can to the new knowledge.”

— Percy Bridgman (1919), “Letter to R.M. Hunter”

“When you’re really ‘hot’, there’s going to be a lot of ‘money’ coming in.”

— Paul McCartney (c.1985), career advice to Michael Jackson; quote (2007) in: Forbes 100th Anniversary Issue (pg. 152)

“Nature’s operations, as far as we have yet observed them, proceed by inexorable atheistical laws, and every new discovery of natural laws is a new blow to the tottering dogma of a ‘moral governor’ and mechanical contriver, the offspring of dark and ignorant ages.”

— E.B. (1851), commentary on John Mackintosh’s “The Logic of Atheism”

“To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it.”

— Charlie Chaplin (c.1920) (Ѻ)

“So large is the number of fools.”

— Galileo (1596), note to Kepler on his refrain from publishing on Copernicus

“The universe is nothing more than a physical and chemical laboratory in which material powers carry on an unceasing change and transformation. The mind is nothing but the result of an organizing combination and cooperation of physical and physiological powers.”

— Karl Heinzen (c.1870) (Ѻ)

“In virtually every branch of knowledge, repressive methods were used: lectures were proscribed, publication was hampered, professorships were denied, fierce invective and ridicule appeared in the press. Scholars and scientists learned the lesson and responded to the pressures on them. The ones with unpopular ideas sometimes recanted, published anonymously, presented their ideas in weakened forms, or delayed publication for many years.”

— Howard Gruber (1974), On how ‘materialism’ (or atheism), in Darwin’s college days [c.1827], was more outrageous than ‘evolution’ [1]

“Marx, having read Feuerbach, found he could no longer agree with Bauer. Religion was not some crazy nonsense that could be swept away and beneath it would be a better world.”

— Jennifer Hecht (2003), Doubt: a History (pg. 390); quote brings to mind the 9 Sep 2014 start of the atheism timeline (version 26), which resulted itself from the Nietzsche four-image (Ѻ) “God is Dead” which was put on the Hmolpedia main page in circa early 2014; prior to which “religion” had been “swept under the rug” (worked around, politely avoided, etc.) of Hmolpedia (see: dirty “rug” image of chemistry professor paradox).

“It is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hid treasure.”

— Thomas Aikenhead (c.1697) “Letter to Friend” (last words), penned morning of his age 20 hanging for blasphemy, Jan 8

“A man who ain’t got is word is a cockroach.”

— Oliver Stone (1983), Tony Montana quote in Scarface

“There is desirable glory in being, and being reputed, an atheist.”

— Daniel Scargill (1668), age 21 opinion expressed publicly as Cambridge University

“No man awakes, whom once the ice end of living overtakes.”

— Lucretius (55BC), On the Nature of Things; cited by Michel Montaigne (1592) in The Complete Works (pg. 324)

“Written in the land of the living; on the right bank of the Adige, in Verona, in the year of that god whom you never knew the 1345th.”

— Petrarch (1345), signoff to a letter

“You find me a state or society that threw off theocracy and threw off religion and said we adopt the teachings of Lucretius and Democritus and Galileo and Spinoza and Darwin and Russell and Jefferson and Thomas Paine, and we make those what we teach our children. We make that scientific and rational humanism our teaching. You find me that state, that did that, and fell into tyranny, and slavery, and famine, and torture, and then we’ll be on a level playing field.”

— Christopher Hitchens (2008), “Debate with Peter Hitchens on Iraq War and Religion” (Ѻ), Grand Valley State University, Apr 3

“It's the questions that we can't answer that teach us the most. [compare: “it’s the questions that drive us” (Ѻ)] They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers. That way, when he finds the answers, they'll be precious to him. The harder the question, the harder we hunt. The harder we hunt, the more we learn.”

— Anon (c.2012), or Kevin Day (Ѻ), anon (Ѻ)(Ѻ), Patrick Rothfuss (Ѻ), or Nick Brown (Ѻ)

“Society is essentially a physical phenomenon. The people, economic goods, culture and tradition, and social organization are the potential energy of society, while all kinds of activity — work, play, worship, etc. — constitute the kinetic energy; and these two — potential energy and kinetic energy — combine to make up the sum total of social energy, as the two combine in the physical realm.”

— Newell Sims (1924), Society and its Surplus (pg. #) (see: social Lagrangian) (png); cited by Howard W. Odum (1929) in An Introduction to Social Research (pg. 112)

“Desire is the social force, and where there is no desire, no will, there is no force, no social energy. Civilization is the product of active social energy.”

— Lester Ward (1903), Pure Sociology (pgs. 33-34) (png); cited by Newell Sims (1924) in Society and Surplus (pg. 14)

“It would appear almost an act of folly, in pretending to uproot that ancient Upas-tree of religious superstition, under the poisonous shade of which mankind has been for ages accustomed to repose, and the roots of which are so widespread and profound.”

— Charles Dupuis (c.1794), cited as views in agreement with by 1872 English translator

“Let me not be called a wicked atheist for seeing the likeness between Brahma and Abraham.’”

— Godfrey Higgins (1833), Anacalypsis, Volume One (pg. 391)

“On the shelves there was also to be found, naturally, Ostwald’s Energetics, that sort of thermodynamic bible in which god is replaced by a lay entity called energy.”

— Ernesto Sabato (1981), On Heroes and Tombs (pg. 256); compare: Mirza Beg (1987) and Frederick Rossini (1971) who replace god with free energy

“Everything in the Bible is taken from the Book of the Dead. Hellenistic, Roman religion, et al are copies of the Egyptian Book of Dead.”

— Calpurniso (2009), video (Ѻ) text at 4:42; an oft-classified (Ѻ) extreme atheist (albeit abrasive)

“Entropy, next to energy, is the most important property of physical systems. Since its maximum value indicates a state of equilibrium, all the laws of physical and chemical equilibrium follow from a knowledge of entropy.”

— Max Planck (1948), “Scientific Autobiography”

“The laws of human reasoning coincide with the laws governing the sequences of the impressions we receive from the world about us. Pure reasoning, therefore, can enable man to gain an insight into the mechanism of the latter. In this connection, it is of paramount importance that the outside world is something independent from man, something absolute, and the quest for the laws which apply to this absolute appeared to me as the most sublime scientific pursuit in life.”

— Max Planck (1948), “Scientific Autobiography”

“Beauty is said to be a fatal gift to women, and it may be added that genius is a fatal gift to men; they are born before their time and out of harmony with the things about them.”

— Edward Trelawny (1878), “Commentary on Percy Shelley”; in: Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author, Volume One (pg. xvi)

“A sociology which follows society back to quanta and electrons and projects telesis into a new heaven and earth, cannot hope to escape satirical description as a science of organized smatter.”

— Franklin Giddings (1929), Publication; cited (Ѻ) by Robert Bannister (1987)

“The driving motive (or impelling cause) in all natural events is the difference between the existing entropy and its maximum value.”

— Ludwig Boltzmann (c.1887), Publication; cited by Joseph Klein (1910) in Physical Significance of Entropy (pg. 98)

“I know that the sunrise is an optical illusion. My teacher told me so.”

— Henry Mencken (1925), attributed; said by E.K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly), of the Baltimore Herald, patterned after Mencken (Ѻ), in: Inherent in the Wind (1960), the film remake of the Scopes Monkey Trail, in response to query as to "why he bothers" (Ѻ), him and his newspaper, dealing with this religious legal trickery

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

— Greek proverb (c.300BC) (Ѻ)

“The science of force is power acting by law in space and time.”

— William Hamilton (1834), “Introductory Remarks” to On a General Method in Dynamics, Mar

“Man finds himself in a world which must be understood in order to be controlled. His world of experience is constantly changing from moment to moment. The effort of science is to understand the mechanism through which phenomena take place; that is, all occurrences. Hence, science is the method of solving the more complex problems of experience which man has worked out though his intelligence.”

— Charles Ellwood (1925), The Psychology of Human Society (pg. I); cited by Howard W. Odum in: An Introduction to Social Research (pgs. 13-14)

“As strange as it sounds, I have thought the same way (chemically) about relationships ... especially entropy and molecules. Weird.”

— Hala Kalmareiata (Ѻ) (2014), “IQ:200+ | Smartest Person Ever (3 of 4)”, forum (Ѻ) post

“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.”

— Lord Byron (c.1810) (Ѻ)

“The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.”

— Ogden Nash (c.1950) (Ѻ)

“Originally I assumed or believed that everybody thought like I did [or like we do]; I soon, however, found this not to be the case.”

— Josip Stepanic (c.2009), comment to American electrochemical engineer Libb Thims (see: forest blind)

“The concept of purpose is involved in several physical principles, notably Hamilton’s principle and the related but identical principle of least action, Hertz’s principle of the straightest path, Gauss’ principle of least constraint, and Fermat’s principle of least time. They all effectively state that things take place in the physical world, e.g. the motions of systems of particles, in such a way as to make a certain function assume a stationary value under certain boundary conditions, usually a minimum as compared with all possible values satisfying the given conditions. Hamilton’s principle, e.g., says that for a conservative dynamical system the motion between any two instants of time is such that the time integral of the difference between the kinetic and potential energies taken between these two instances has a stationary value. It has as if the system had a certain purpose to satisfy. A rational individual is said to arrange his actions so as to be sure of achieving his fundamental desires, whether it be to accumulate wealth or gain power over his fellow men. In particular, the aim here is almost always to try to attain the given desired end at minimum cost in human effort. This strongly suggests a heuristic connection with the minimum principles of physics.”

— Bruce Lindsay (1983), “Social Exemplifications of Physical Principles”; see 2014 thread (Ѻ) post #8 [1]

“The man attracts man in the social chemistry, as the molecule to another order of composition. A new hut will pick the vicinity of the already built cabin by reason of sympathy along safety. Soon the industry will support agriculture; the blacksmith turn his forge next to the farm to beat the Ploughshares, the wheelwright and blacksmith will follow the carpenter the wheelwright, and so on to the tailor. Agricultural dispersed, the industry focuses. The village will be born of the industry. Do I need to predict the first public monument that will rise on the savings of the town? It will always be the school house.”

— Eugene Pelletan (1863), “Address to the Cotton King”

“Let’s say we granted that every three-day old embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. There are other problems that await this description. First of all, embryos, at this stage, can split, into what we call identical twins. Now is this this a case of one soul splitting into two souls? Embryos, at this stage, can fuse, into what we call a ‘chimera’. Many people in this room could’ve developed in this way. Now I suspect that there are theologians trying to figure out what has happened to the extra soul, in such a case? It’s time we realized that this arithmetic of souls doesn’t make any sense.”

— Sam Harris (c.2010), talk at Salk Institute (V:6:10)

“I propose the following definition, which is applied to everything, including minerals: ‘life is the faculty of reaction.’ Everything in the universe tends toward inertia, or absence of reaction. The proof of this inertia, which thermodynamics seeks in ‘absolute zero,’ has never been given, nor will it ever be, because absolute inertia can only be attained through the cessation of the formed matter or ‘thing’. This would be the moment the thing ceased to exist. Everything ‘existing’ is capable of reaction, insofar as it has ‘weight’, that is, fixed or specific energy. The vital phenomenon is the faculty of reacting, and to manifest itself this reaction requires a resistance of the same nature as the action.”

— Rene Lubicz (1949), The Temple of Man

“The essence of behaviorism is the belief that the study of man will reveal nothing except what is adequately describable in the concepts of mechanics and chemistry.”

— Karl Lashley (1928), “The Behavioristic Interpretation of Consciousness”

“Attractions are proportional to destines.”

— Charles Fourier (c.1808)

“We can, indeed, kill all organic beings and thus render them inorganic at will. But these changes are not the same as those which we induce in a piece of chalk by pouring sulphuric acid upon it; in this case we only change the form, and the inorganic matter remains. But when we pour sulphuric acid upon a worm, or when we burn an oak-tree, these organisms are not changed into some other animal and tree, but they disappear entirely as organized beings and are resolved into inorganic elements.”

— August Weismann (1889), Essay on Heredity; seeming variant of Gregory Bateson’s kick a stone or kick a dog comparison (Ѻ)

“The Aristotelian viewpoint still prevails to some extent in biology, namely that an animal moves only for a purpose, either to seek food or to seek its mate or to undertake something else connected with preservation of the individual or the race. The Aristotelians had explained the process in the inanimate world in the same teleological way. Science began when Galileo overthrew this Aristotelian mode of thought and introduced the method of quantitative experiments which leads to mathematical laws free form the metaphysical conception of purpose. The analysis of animal conduct only becomes scientific in so far as it drops the question of purpose and reduces the reactions of animals to quantitative laws.”

— Jacques Loeb (1918), Forced Movements, Tropisms, and Animal Conduct

“… seductive women—why should I, despite all scruples and obstacles, cast myself into the dust before you? Dearst Franziska, herein lies the enigma of ‘elective affinity’, of that strange psychological ‘chemotropism’, of whose power I have spoken repeatedly in my books—little dreaming that I myself should fall a victim to it in my old age!”

— Ernst Haeckel (c.1900), letter to Franziska von Altenhausen

The Dalton Red Webster dialogue (Ѻ), from the film Road House (1989), on how marring an ugly woman takes the energy right out of you.

“To revisit this long-lost sentimentality, I would like to chemically paraphrase John Lennon's famous theorem [“all you need is love”, 1967 (Ѻ)]. First, however, I need to tell you that the most important thing about chemical reactions is that they try to reach equilibrium. Or, to put it in thermodynamic terms, when they occur in the open, they seek to minimize their Gibbs energy, which is universally given the symbol capital G. Graphically, and truthfully, one can say that reacting molecules spontaneously find the lowest spot on their G-curves [“G-spot” (Ѻ) pun]. Getting back to the Beatles, perhaps the love you take is in equilibrium with the love you make?”

— Preston MacDougall (2006), on Goethe, Gibbs, G-curves and G-spots; in “Chemical Eye on Love” (Ѻ), Feb 13

“The only ontological difference between men and say, billiard balls is the degree of complexity in the groups of atoms involved. A billiard ball is being bombarded by atoms from the cabbage just as I am, but it does not perceive the cabbage. Why? Because none of its atoms happen to be grouped into that configuration of atoms we call a mind.”

— William Jones (1969), The History of Western Philosophy, Volume 1: The Classical Mind

“Goethe, in Elective Affinities, brooded over the juridical procedures of god.”

— Friedrich Gundolf (1916), Goethe

“Just as nature abhors a vacuum, humans resist change. Change will occur; vacuums will be filled.”

— Nikki Giovanni (c.2000) (Ѻ)

“Where do you draw the line between one creature and another? Where does one organism stop and another begin? Is there even a boundary between you and the non-living world, or will the atoms of this page be a part of your body tomorrow? How, in short, can you make any sense out of the conception of a man as a discrete entity? How can the proper study form man be man if it is impossible for man to exist out of context. For the ecologist, then, the desire of some in the humanities to deal only with the fragment of reality they term ‘human’ is nonsense.”

— Neil Evernden (1996), “Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, and the Pathetic Fallacy”; cited by Matthew Taylor (2008)

“Why you pursue something, is equally important as what you pursue.”

— Dan Gilroy (2014), character: Lou Bloom of film Nightcrawler (Ѻ)

“Her puṡṡy was like heroin to me. And it wasn’t just about the sex, we got along, and had similar interests and sḣit.”

— Jordan Belfort (2013), The Wolf of Wall Street (Ѻ)(Ѻ)(Ѻ)

“I did not embark on experiments on consciousness in alert people until after I had obtained the security of academic tenure.”

— Benjamin Libet (c.1990), comment to Francis Crick

“He who strays from the paths traced by providence crashes.”

— Charles Hermite (c.1962), frequently told to atheist (Ѻ) Jacques Hadamard in 1924 [22]

“A man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.”

— Andrew Carnegie (c.1910), most-highlighted quote in 50 Shades of Gray, 2011 (Ѻ)

“I've always felt that I was destined for some great achievement, what I don't know. The last great opportunity of a lifetime—an entire world at war, and I'm left out of it? God will not permit this to happen! I will be allowed to fulfill my destiny! His will be done.”

— George C. Scott (1970), Patton; screenplay by Francis Coppola (Ѻ)

“The law of conservation applies to some things and not to others, and the things which it does not apply are unreal.”

— James Johnstone (1914), The Philosophy of Biology

“I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can't remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there.”

— Christopher Nolan (2000), Memento, ending mental thoughts of the character Leonard Shelby (Ѻ); from the short story “Memento Mori” by Jonathan Nolan—itself based on the Latin phrase Memento mori (remember Mor), “remember death arrives” (Ѻ), which is symbolic of the theory and practice on reflection mortality, i.e. to keep in mind the transient nature of earthly goods and pursuits

“I’m prepared to leave this life. I have no fear. I’ll just disintegrate into molecules and atoms. They’ll be probably transformed into another form of living matter.”

— Vladimir Vernadsky (1945), “Diary Note” (Ѻ), written shortly before his dereaction (death) on Jan 6

“Nothing whatever can be moved by itself, but its motion is effected through another. There is no other force.”

— Leonardo Da Vinci (1490), notebook writings (see: self terminology reform)

“All power flows from the people.”

— Baron Gurney (c.1840) (Ѻ)

“Gauss and Goethe were Quetelet's intellectual parents and Goethe predominated.”

— Author (1998), (Ѻ)

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four.”

— George Orwell (1984), said by character Winston Smith in the novel 1984 [21]

“What's the matter with you guys? This was never about the money, this was about us against the system. That system that kills the human spirit. We stand for something. We are here to show those guys that are inching their way on the freeways in their metal coffins that the human spirit is still alive.”

— Bodhi (1991), Point Break, arisen to mine while posting previous quote

“I’ll kill a communist for fun, but for a green card I’m gonna carve him up real nice.”

— Tony Montana (1983), Scarface, reflection on the manliest movie of all time poll #1 ranking position; compare: Helvetius (1773) on annihilating the desires.

“My time has not yet come, some people are born posthumously. I write for a species of men that do not yet exist.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche (c.1875)

“Give a man fire and he’s warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.”

— Terry Pratchett (c.1996) (Ѻ)

“It is rather a singular instance of the manner in which similar views arise at about the same time that Goethe in Germany, Erasmus Darwin in England, and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in France, came to the same conclusion on the origin of species, in the years 1794-95.”

— Charles Darwin (1872), On the Origin of Species [20]

“Let no one enter here who is ignorant of mathematics.”

— Plato (360BC), plaque over door to his academy, a motto supposedly learned from his studies in Egypt [19]

“There is no god! There is no god! I came to America so I could say that. In my country [Iran], they will kill me if I say that.”

— Sadegh Simorgh (2014), response following query by Libb Thims of “Are you a Muslim?”, to which he first responded “On my ID card”, to which Thims responded “What do you mean?”, Oct 31

“I didn’t choose to be born, and if I’d been given the option, I’d have asked to been let off.”

— Clarence Darrow (c.1930), Scopes Monkey Trial documentary (18:25-18:44)

“The value of a man does not depend on the truth he possesses or believes he possesses, but on the sincere labor he has bestowed upon getting at the truth; for it is not the possession of, but the search for truth, that increases his strength and thereby makes him more perfect.”

— Gotthold Lessing (c.1770), quoted by Ludwig Buchner, Force and Matter (pg. xiii)

“By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.”

— Helvetius (1773), A Treatise on Man: His Intellectual Faculties and his Education (Ѻ)

“Romantic love, we still read in cosmopolitan, is a ‘matter of chemistry’, an image that has its support in the writings of the greatest poets, in Shakespeare, for instance, and in Goethe, whose novel Elective Affinities has been prime reading in Europe for almost two centuries.”

— Robert Solomon (1981), Love: Emotion, Myth, Metaphor (pg. 38)

“To be modern is to be part of a universe in which, as Marx said, ‘all that is solid melts into air’.”

— Marshall Berman (1982), All That Is Solid Melts into Air (pg. 15) (Ѻ)

“What is democracy but a successful formula for controlling the chemical reactions of our 145,000,000 people, and turning the friction and heat generated by our living together into production and progress?”

— Thomas Dreier (1948), We Human Chemicals (pg. 48)

“All science starts with hypothesis.”

— George Millin (1896), title page quote to Evil and Evolution; a supposed truncation of Roger Bacon’s Aristotelian-framed scientific method (1265) [17]

“Whoever would arrive at excellence must be self-taught. There is, in reality, very little that a person who is serious and industriously disposed to improve may not obtain from books with more advantage than from a living instructor.”

— Thomas Young (1798), “Letter to brother”

“The longer a person has lived the less he gains by reading, and the more likely he is to forget what he has read and learnt of old; and the only remedy that I know of is to write upon every subject that he wishes to understand, even if he burns what he has written.”

— Thomas Young (1809), “Letter to Hudson Gurney” [6]

“The fundamental concept in social science is power, in the same sense which energy is the fundamental concept in physics.”

— Bertrand Russell (1938), Power: a New Social Analysis [16]

“No one has ever touched a soul, or seen one in a test tube.”

— John Watson (1924), Behaviorism

“If one had the kind of vision [e.g. electron microscope] that allowed one [see: advanced perspective] to see molecules and were in a jungle, one would see molecules wandering about everywhere, at random. In this ceaseless wandering, one might recognize a locus in which molecules of various types were particularly concentrated, which held its form [bound state] approximately while myriads of molecules streamed in and out [turnover rate]; and that locus would be a monkey in the jungle. That continuous inflow and outflow of material [metabolism], and whatever of its structure endured, would not only make that a unique monkey from among monkeys but would ensure that it changed [see: Heraclitus] from moment to moment throughout its entire existence.”

— Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (c.1975)

“Everything we sensually experience can be reduced to energy relationships between our sense organs and the world around us.”

— Wilhelm Ostwald (1926), autobiographical reflection of his spring 1890 “pentecostal inspiration” [15]

“I am made from the C-H-N-O-S-P combination from which a Bunsen, Helmholtz, Kirchhoff came.”

— Wilhelm Ostwald (1926), Lifelines: an Autobiography [14]

“Energy. You have sex, there’s friction … that’s heat. Then a baby shoots out. It’s all energy. The sun's a giant orgasm. Like if you see a hot girl ... and she's soo hot, you can't even touch that sh*t. You're like daaammn! ”

— Pat aka King Atheist (2014), when queried on Easter (Apr 20) about what—as an atheist—he believes in?

“As amber attracts a straw, so does beauty admiration, which only lasts while the warmth continues.”

— Robert Burton (1621), The Anatomy of Melancholy

“The belief state of an obscure lump of molecules wandering around a remote corner of England is of no importance whatsoever epistemologically speaking.”

— Barry Barnes (1998), response to David Mermin whether he “might perhaps be into astrology” [12]

“Real orgies are never so exciting as pornographic books. In a volume by Pierre Louys all the girls are young and their figures perfect; there's no hiccoughing or bad breath, no fatigue or boredom, no sudden recollections of unpaid bills or business letters unanswered, to interrupt the raptures. Art gives you the sensation, the thought, the feeling quite pure—chemically pure, I mean, [with a laugh] not morally.”

— Aldous Huxley (1928), Point Counter Point [13]

“The only way to learn is to question.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre (c.1945), lecture at the Sorbonne

“When a certain number of material particles consisting of phosphorus, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and perhaps some other elements, are, in consequence of the operations of their mutual forces, in certain positions with respect to each other, and in certain states of motion, consciousness is the result, but whenever this relative state is brought to an end, there is also an end of consciousness and the sense of individual existence, while however the particles of phosphorus, carbon, etc., remain as truly as ever.”

— Balfour Stewart and Peter Tait (1875), on the “extreme materialism” view [10]

“This universe may in truth be compared to a vast heat engine, and this is the reason why we have brought such engines so prominently before our readers. The sun is the furnace or source of high-temperature heat of our system, just as the stars are for other systems, and the energy which is essential to our existence is derived from the heat which the sun radiates, and represents only a very small portion of that heat.”

— Balfour Stewart and Peter Tait (1875), on the transformation of heat into work [10]

“Since as a kid I was aware of the abyss (super rift) between the material and mental worlds. I tried to bridge this abyss, but could not. Yet I kept on with my own "Steigerung" as Goethe did. Then during 1982-83 I discovered empirically that the law of entropy production applies to the spiritual [humanistic] world as it applies to the physical world. My joy knew no bounds. I have found the bridge between these two worlds with which to cross the abyss between them. Others thought I was crazy and would not dare to publish my account. Then, in 1986, if I remember correctly, I was teaching university students the intricate calculations concerning free energy in chemical reactions. During that lecture I suddenly became aware how my mind was rushing along two levels. The lower level was concerned with chemical processes as a physical phenomenon. I executed this level almost automatically. But the higher level of my mind was exploring free energy in the process of knowing-learning as a spiritual [thermodynamics] phenomenon. I followed this level with great curiosity. I think the students became aware that I was rather absent minded that day, not perceiving my higher most thoughts. That day marks the beginning of my continual exploring of the role of free energy in the spiritulization [actualization] of humankind.”

— Adriaan de Lange (2010), retrospect reflection on arrival of human free energy theory

“Training is nothing! The will is everything! The will to act.”

— Christopher Nolan and David Goyer (2005), Batman Begins (vid)

“I know the rage that drives you. That impossible anger strangling the grief, until the memory of your loved ones is just poison in your veins.”

— Christopher Nolan and David Goyer (2005), Batman Begins (vid)

“Like you, I was forced to learn the rhythm without decency. Your anger gives you great power, but if you let it, it will destroy you, as it almost did me.”

— Christopher Nolan and David Goyer (2005), Batman Begins, version (Ѻ) as heard by Thims (vid)

“[Kearney] plays poker for a living and is fat. Well for a [supposed] genius he sure not well rounded. People that choose not exercise to my mind have to have to be mentally deficient.”

— iMaDeMoN2012 (2013), IQ 200+ | Smartest person ever (2 of 4) comment (Ѻ), Jun

“The morning after Goethe's death, a deep desire seized me to look once again upon his earthly garment. His faithful servant, Frederick, opened for me the chamber in which he was laid out. Stretched upon his back, he reposed as if asleep; profound peace and security reigned in the features of his sublimely noble countenance. The mighty brow seemed yet to harbor thoughts. I wished for a lock of his hair; but reverence prevented me from cutting it off. The body lay naked, only wrapped in a white sheet; large pieces of ice had been placed near it, to keep it fresh as long as possible. Frederick drew aside the sheet, and I was astonished at the divine magnificence of the limbs. The breast was powerful, broad, and arched; the arms and thighs were elegant, and of the most perfect shape; nowhere, on the whole body, was there a trace of either fat or of leanness and decay. A perfect man lay in great beauty before me; and the rapture the sight caused me made me forget for a moment that the immortal spirit had left such an abode. I laid my hand on his heart – there was a deep silence – and I turned away to give free vent to my suppressed tears.”

— Johann Eckermann (1832), day after Goethe’s reaction end (death) at age 82

“As part of his plan, Theon established a regimen of physical training for Hypatia, such as rowing, swimming, and horseback riding, to ensure that her body would be as healthy as her well-trained mind.”

— Author (date), synopsis of raising regiment of Hypatia (Ѻ), the only known female universal genius

“A person who writes so much must spread his message rather thin.”

— Willard Gibbs (c.1901), comment to Edwin Wilson on uncut (unread) books

“I have little patience for scientists who take on a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes when the drilling is easy.”

— Albert Einstein (c.1930), recalled by Philipp Frank [18]

See main: Physico-chemical morality

“We conclude that there exists a principle of the human body which comes from the great process in which so many millions of atoms of the earth become many millions of human molecules.”

— Jean Sales (1789), The Philosophy of Nature: Treatise on Human Moral Nature

“The moral symbols in the natural sciences—for example that of the elective affinities invented and used by the great Bergman—are more intelligent and permit themselves to be connected better with poetry, even connected with society better than any others, which are, after all, even the mathematical ones, anthropomorphic. The thing is that the former (the chemicals) belong with the emotions, the latter (mathematics) belong with the understanding.”

— Johann Goethe (1809), “Conversation with Friedrich Riemer”, Jul 24

“Many do not see the battle between morality and passion within Elective Affinities.”

— Johann Goethe (1809), in response to critics, mid Dec; in: Tantillo (pg. 6) (FA 2, 6:616-17)

“My chief proposition: there are no moral phenomena, there are only a moral interpretation of these phenomena. This interpretation itself is of extra-moral origin.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche (c.1885), WP:258

“If iron sulphate and caustic potash are brought together, the SO4 ions leave the iron to unite with the potassium. When in nature an adjustment of such differences of potential is about to take place, he who would approve or disapprove of the process from the moral point of view would appear to most to play a ridiculous part.”

— Otto Weininger (1903), Sex and Character

“Morality has nothing to do with any particular form of religion. Morality is the adjustment of matter to its environment—the natural arrangement of molecules. More especially it may be considered as dealing with organic molecules. Conventionally it is the science of reconciling the animal homo (more or less) sapiens to the forces and conditions with which he is surrounded.”

— Howard Lovecraft (1918), “Letter to Maurice Moe”, May 15

“The most familiar attempts to explain how evolution takes place are restricted to special aspects of evolution, and are often epitomized in personal names, such as Darwinism, Lamarkism, Weismannism, Mendelism. Among us there are naturalists, morphologists, physiologists, and psychologists; breeders, experimentalists, and bio-chemists. And surrounding us on all sides are the physicists, chemists, geologists, and astronomers, with whom we must reckon, for their domains and their subject matter overlap ours in countless ways. But unfortunately between all these workers there is little common understanding and much petty criticism. We shall use the terms morality, behavior, conduct, or constructive action in the same broad way. It may sound strange to speak of the morals of an atom, or of the way in which a molecule conducts itself. But in the last analysis, science can draw no fundamental distinction between the conduct of an animal, a bullet, or a freshman, although there may be more unknown factors involved in one case than in the other.”

— William Patten (1920), AAAS address “The Message of the Biologist” + The Grand Strategy of Evolution: the Social Philosophy of a Biologist

“Thinking about atoms discussing morals is absurd.”

— Ravi Zacharias (1990), The Real Face of Atheism

“This is the sort of irrelevant-sounding question that seems minor at first, and the mind looks for a quick answer to dismiss it. It sounds like one of those hostile, ignorant questions some fundamentalist preacher might think up. But why do the fittest survive? Why does any life survive? It's illogical. It's self-contradictory that life should survive. If life is strictly a result of the physical and chemical forces of nature then why is life opposed to these same forces in its struggle to survive? Either life is with physical nature or it's against it. If it's with nature there's nothing to survive. If it's against physical nature then there must be something apart from the physical and chemical forces of nature that is motivating it to be against physical nature. The second law of thermodynamics states that all energy systems ‘run down’ like a clock and never rewind themselves. But life not only ‘runs up,’ converting low energy sea-water, sunlight and air into high-energy chemicals, it keeps multiplying itself into more and better clocks that keep "running up" faster and faster. Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon (C), hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), and nitrogen (N), 'struggle' for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive? (see: motive force) If we leave a chemistry professor out on a rock in the sun long enough the forces of nature will convert him into simple compounds of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and small amounts of other minerals. It's a one-way reaction. No matter what kind of chemistry professor we use and no matter what process we use we can't turn these compounds back into a chemistry professor. Chemistry professors are unstable mixtures of predominantly unstable compounds which, in the exclusive presence of the sun's heat, decay irreversibly into simpler organic and inorganic compounds. That's a scientific fact. The question is: Then why does nature reverse this process? What on earth causes the inorganic compounds to go the other way? It isn't sun's energy. We just saw what the sun's energy did. It has to something else. What is it?”

— Robert Pirsig (1991), Lila: An Inquiry into Morals

“The first rule of science is the truth at any price including the price of your life. That rule also applies to morality.”

— Howard Bloom (2012). The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates [4]

“Manifold avenues open up almost as soon as one begins to tackle the problem.”

— Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1971), The Entropy Law and the Economic Process

“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he or she be in after years relieved of them. The reason for this is that a superstition is so intangible a thing that you cannot get at it to refute it.”

— Hypatia (360-415)

“You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay; it is the height of madness to learn what you will later have to unlearn.”

— Desiderius Erasmus (1497), “Letter to Christian Northoff” [23]

“It takes the latter half of all of one’s lifetime to unlearn the falsehood that was instilled into us during the earlier half. Generation after generation we learn, unlearn, and re-learn the same lying legendary lore. Henceforth, our studies must begin from the evolutionist standpoint in order that they may not have to be gone over again.”

— Gerald Massey (1883), The Natural Genesis [3]

“Love and hunger rule the world.”

— Friedrich Schiller (1795), “The Philosophers” (Die Welteisen) (?); StatusMind.com (?)

“Hunger and love are what moves the world.”

— Friedrich Schiller (1795), quoted by Sigmund Freud, in Civilization and its Discontents (1930) (?), as basis if his drive theory (?) [9]

“Hunger and love are two fundamental forces that reign in the living world, they are the primary source of all phenomena, mental and social.”

— Leon Winiarski (1899), Essay on Social Mechanics

“Love and hunger rule the world. Ergo, to rule the world, one must master love and hunger.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (1920)

“What’s remarkable is that atoms have assembled into entities, which are somehow able to ponder their origins.”

— Martin Rees (c.2010) (video @ 1:20)

“If the proof is correct then no other recognition is needed.”

— Grigori Perelman (2006), in comment on turning down the Fields Medal (and $1 million dollars)

“No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically.”

— Leonardo da Vinci (c.1490)

See main: Hmolscience quotes

“How I look forward to the effect that this [chemistry-based] novel will have in a few years on many people upon rereading it.”

— Johann Goethe (1809), comment (see: timeline) to Karl Reinhard

“There is some truth in Boerhaave's poetic comparison: [that] [force of chemical affinity] is “love, if love be the desire for marriage”.

— Jean Dumas (1837), commentary on Herman Boerhaave’s 1732 supposition

“Just as man and woman attract one another, so oxygen O2 attracts hydrogen H2 [and] just as a steam engine produces motion, so the intricate organic complex of force-bearing substance in an animal organism produces a total sum of certain effects.”

— Ludwig Buchner (1855), Force and Matter: Principles of the Natural Order of the Universe, with a System of Morality Based Thereon

“He who gives back at the first repulse and without striking the second blow despairs of success and has never been, is not, and never will be a hero in war, love, or business.”

— Frederick Tudor (age 22), 1805

“Until one is committed there is always hesitancy, a chance to draw back. Always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it now.”

— Johann Goethe, Faust (1832)

“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.”

— Napoleon Bonaparte (date)

“Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.”

— Leonardo da Vinci (c.1500)

“Those who rely simply on the weight of authority to prove any assertion, without searching out the arguments to support it, act absurdly. I wish to question freely and to answer freely without any sort of adulation. That well becomes any who are sincere in the search for truth.”

— Vincenzo Galilei (c.1570)

“Plato is my friend, but truth my greater friend.”

— Aristotle (c.350 BC), quote inscribed into Newton's age 19 written notebook Philosophical Questions.

“Nothing ought to be received as truth until it has been proved by good and solid reasons.”

— Rene Descartes (c.1620), quote especially impressed Benedict Spinoza

“Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”

— Giordano Bruno (c.1590)

“He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”

— Thomas Jefferson (Ѻ)

“To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it; and thus, to know anything — you must know all.”

— Oliver Homes (1886), American jurist

“Erasmus advises students to read only the best books on the subjects with which they are occupied. He cautions them against loading their memories with the errors of inferior writers which they will afterwards have to throw off and forget.”

— James Froude (1894), Life and Letters of Erasmus [1]

“Like you I was forced to learn the rhythms without decency.”

— Liam Neeson, Batman Begins (2005)

“When I first set foot in the Boston Public Library, I felt as though the gates of heaven had opened to me.”

— Boris Sidis (1884), age 17 after being locked in a body-sized cell for two years for teaching peasants to read

“If one does not know what went on for the last three thousand years, he or she remains ignorant, merely surviving from day-to-day.”

— Johann Goethe (date)

“If I were in seventh grade now my mind would be rotting.”

— Balamurali Ambati (age 12), 1990, MD (age 17)

“I worked under conditions of the greatest pressure, first in Moscow and subsequently in a special secret research center. We were fascinated by the grandeur of the task.”

— Andrei Sakharov (c.1970)

“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”

— Marcus Aurelius (c.170)

“A man must know his destiny … if he does not recognize it, then he is lost. By this I mean, once, twice, or at the very most, three times, fate will reach out and tap a man on the shoulder… if he has the imagination, he will turn around and fate will point out to him what fork in the road he should take, if he has the guts, he will take it.”

— George S. Patton Jr. (c.1940) (Ѻ)

“A man must embrace his destiny or be destroyed by it.”

— Anon (c.2010) (Ѻ), somehow connected to Spartacus: Blood and Sand drama (Ѻ)

“The human species is but one of many. Viewed from a sort of universal microscope, we appear as but a vast collection of molecules in motion. In our current state we are firmly attached to an earthly substrate, feeding off the energy gradient of the sun. The fate of our chemical species is undeniably tied to the affinities and energies of interaction required to maintain our evolving earth ecosystem. We live in a closed system. In order to understand the nature of things, we must learn more about both our reactions and our products.”

— Jeff Tuhtan (2012), PhD dissertation: “A Modeling Approach for Alpine Rivers Impacted by Hydropeaking Including the Second Law Inequality” (pg. 1)

“The affinity of two molecules for each other and its temperature dependence are determined by the change in enthalpy, free enthalpy, entropy, and heat capacity upon dissociation.”

— Joel Janin (1995), “Elusive Affinities” [2]

“Whether two molecules will bind is determined by the free energy change of the interaction, composed of both enthalpic and entropic terms.”

— Julie Forman-Kay (1999), "The Dynamics in the Thermodynamics of Binding"

“Molecules, in condensed phases, as compared to reactions in gases, tend to get trapped, or ‘caged’, in certain locations, and can only with difficulty force their way out towards reactive sites.”

— Arthur Campbell (1965), Why Do Chemical Reactions Occur

See main: Barmaid explanations

“If you can’t make a physical model of it, you don’t understand it well enough.”

— James Maxwell (c.1870), stated somewhere, in thereabout this form; or William Thomson (see: below) [?]

“I can’t understand something, unless I can make a physical model of it.”

— William Thomson (c.1880) according to Robert Clark (1948), who said he is “reported to have said” this [24]

“One major difference between the ‘games’ played by theoretical physicists and those played by pure mathematicians is that, aside from meeting the demands of internal consistency and mathematical rigor, a physical model must also meet the inflexible boundary condition of agreeing with physical reality.”

— James Cushing (date); compare Gibbs on mathematicians vs. physicists [7]

“It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.”

— Ernest Rutherford (c.1915) [5]

“All physical theories, their mathematical expressions apart, ought to lend themselves to so simple a description that even a child could understand them.”

— Albert Einstein (c.1930), comment to Louis de Brogile [5]

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

— Albert Einstein (1947), supposedly derived (Ѻ) from Rutherford “barmaid” comment [6]

“There is no point in starting your own business unless you do it out of a sense of frustration.”

— Richard Branson (?)(?)

“For any particular thing, ask: What is it in itself? What is its nature?”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (c.175), The Science of the Lambs (1991)

“I was profoundly unhappy. There was a footpath leading across the fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics.”

— Bertrand Russell (1888), age 16

“The trend towards the already mentioned diversified society of ‘specialists’ and the related danger of narrower way of thinking (idiot savant) necessarily leads to a growing helplessness of the individual. Related to this is a growing blind belief in science. Since Leibnitz, probably the last universal genius, we know more and more about a shrinking area of knowledge. Biology and physics, chemistry and medicine are divided already today into dozens of individual disciplines, which like a ‘hydra’, keep dividing into other individual disciplines.”

— Hans-Wolff Graf (1995), “We Need a New World View” [8]

“One’s theological holdings [can be divided] into two classes: those for which a man would go to the stake, and those for which a man would not go to the stake.”

— Edwards A. Park (c.1870)

“For the second law, I will burn at the stake.”

— Heinz London, comment made to H. Montgomery during his time at Harwell

See main: Libb Thims (personal notes)

“Time is but the absence of strong attractors.”

— Contemplative thought axiom (19 Mar 2010); reflection on Willard Gibbs' comment on his loss of the concept of time while writing On the Equilibrium, Mar 19

“There is a revolution awaiting to happen, greater than the combined revolutions of Darwin and Copernicus; if only I can make it happen.”

— Contemplative thought axiom (13 Aug 2010)

“The smallest abrasion (or abrasive comment) can silence the most powerful of ideas.”

— Personal note (23 Sep 2012), written in black pen on printing paper

“Not only do I not believe in the principle of the afterlife, but also do not believe in the principle of life.”

— Personal note (24 Sep 2012), written in black pen on printing paper

“Chemical thermodynamics has a certain point of view that outranks all other points of view.”

— Contemplative thought axiom (23 Mar 2013)