Selected limits quotes

1. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

2. There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.

3. The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

4. Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.

5. I don't know driving in another way which isn't risky. Each one has to improve himself. Each driver has its limit. My limit is a little bit further than other's.

6. My feeling is that Darwinism is only at best a partial solution, and an extremely dangerous partial solution. I would say, based on the little I know, Darwinism explains microevolution within species quite well. As to its broader consequence and implications, I don't think it explains individual species evolution at all well.

7. Well, me don't swim too tough so me don't go in the water too deep.

8. If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

9. When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.

10. Why do we complain about the Fall? It is not on its account that we were expelled from Paradise, but on account of the Tree of Life, lest we might eat of it.

11. There are no limits to either time or distance, except as man himself may make them. I have but to touch the wind to know these things.

12. The great secret of power is never to will to do more than you can accomplish.

13. Economic depression can not be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement.

14. It is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.

15. I have said publicly no option should be off the table, but I would certainly take nuclear weapons off the table.

16. I cannot command winds and weather.

17. You cannot run faster than a bullet.

18. Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality. I was curious to see what would happen. That's all it was: curiosity.

19. For when I gave you an inch, you took an ell.

20. Every man is the center of a circle, whose fatal circumference he can not pass.

21. You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way.

22. Our knowledge of physics only takes us back so far. Before this instant of cosmic time, all the laws of physics or chemistry are as evanescent as rings of smoke.

23. Drink the first. Sip the second slowly. Skip the third.

24. You can't have filenames longer than 14 chars. You can't even think about them!

25. Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought.

26. Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole.

27. Mohammed personally mapped out seven heavens. If he got to seven, you know there's more.

28. The tragedy of human life consists in our vain attempts to stretch the limits of things which can never become unlimited, to reach the infinite by absurdly adding to the rungs of the ladder of the finite.

29. Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.

30. The days of the digitals are numbered. The metaphor is built into them like a self-destruct mechanism.

31. I certainly do not drink all the time. I have to sleep you know.

32. It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

33. The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite.

34. To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

35. We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.

36. Sometimes the knowledge you've been given in school or by an elder - 'this is just the way it is' - keeps you from accomplishing because it traps you in a box in your mind and limits your freedom to deliver.

37. The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

38. 'God determines how fast you're going to run; I can help only with the mechanics.'

39. Abstraction is an exercise in a pre-assured failure. It is a futile attempt to communicate the non-communicable.

40. Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.

41. History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a single nation, appears impossible.

42. Science is not religion. We're not going to be able to answer the 'why' questions. But when you put together all of what we know about the universe, it fits together amazingly well.

43. Ergo vivida vis pervicet et extra processit longe flamentia moenia mundi atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque.

44. Nequeunt oculis rerum primordia cerni.

45. Pois vens ver os segredos escondidos Da natureza e do umido elemento, A nenhum grande humano concedidos De nobre ou de imortal merecimento, Ouve os danos de mim, que apercebidos Estao a teu sobejo atrevimento, Por todo o largo mar e pela terra, Que ainda has de sojugar com dura guerra.

46. There is no limit to the possibilities of renunciation.

47. Who can say thus far, no further to the tide of his nature?

48. There are various kinds of spirit involved in letting go the hilt. There is the spirit of winning without a sword. There is also the spirit of holding the long sword but not winning. The various methods cannot be expressed in writing. You must train well.

49. To SEE and accept the boundaries of the human mind without vain rebellion, and in these severe limitations to work ceaselessly without protest - this is where man's first duty lies.

50. I will not accept boundaries; appearances cannot contain me; I choke! To bleed in this agony, and to live it profoundly, is the second duty. The mind is patient and adjusts itself, it likes to play; but the heart grows savage and will not condescend to play; it stifles and rushes to tear apart the nets of necessity.

51. Do what I want. Well, that's great advice. But what if the thing I want most in all the world can't be done?

52. Our minds are circumscribed by our immediate reality but we stop short at the thought of it.

53. I can't give you answers on what we know and don't know, other than what's charged in the indictment. It's not because I enjoy being in that position. It's because the law is that way. I actually think the law should be that way. We can't talk about information not contained in the four corners of the indictment.

54. Knowledge is partial, because our intellect is an instrument, it is only a part of us, it can give us information about things which can be divided and analysed, and whose properties can be classified part by part. But Brahma is perfect, and knowledge which is partial can never be a knowledge of him.

55. It is time to be old, To take in sail: - The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: 'No more!

56. Poor juvenile solutions, explaining nothing. No need then for caution, we may reason on to our heart's content, the fog won't lift.

57. The extent of the region of the uncertain, the number of the problems the investigation of which ends in a verdict of not proven, will vary according to the knowledge and the intellectual habits of the individual agnostic. I do not very much care to speak of anything as unknowable. What I am sure about is that there are many topics about which I know nothing, and which, so far as I can see, are out of reach of my faculties. But whether these things are knowable by any one else is exactly one of those matters which is beyond my knowledge, though I may have a tolerably strong opinion as to the probabilities of the case.

58. Reductionism (ultimately, the empirical explanability of everything and a cornerstone of science), has uses that are appropriate, and it also can be used inappropriately. It is appropriately used as a way (one way) of understanding what is empirically known or empirically knowable. When it becomes merely an intellectual 'position' confronting what is not empirically known or knowable, then it becomes very quickly absurd, and also grossly desensitizing and false.

59. We shouldn't rely solely on standardized tests because they don't really capture true potential.

60. Art and religion would not be able to stop the war any more than they would be able to stop tomorrow.

61. A man cannot write a poem or a story that will transform the whole nature of man, his reality and his truth, making them greater and nobler.

62. Our lives are limited, while knowledge is not. Pursuing the unlimited with the limited would be tiring. If you already knew that, it would be even more tiring.

63. Give a soldier an anvil, just a hunk of metal, and drive him out into the desert and leave him. In two weeks - when you go to get him, the anvil will be broken.

64. I can follow ye nae farther, even if ye suld founder and perish from the way for lack of guidance and counsel. To gang into Rob Roy's country is a mere tempting o' Providence.

65. FEMA doesn't evacuate communities. FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do communications...Many may be surprised to learn that, guess what, FEMA doesn't own fire trucks. We don't own ambulances. We don't own search and rescue equipment. The people of FEMA are being tired of being beat up, and they don't deserve it.

66. Nos quatre libertins, a moitie ivres, mais resolus pourtant d'observer leurs lois, se contenterent de baisers, d'attouchements, mais que leur tete libertine sut assaisonner de tous les raffinements de la debauche et de la lubricite.

67. It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depend. Historically this has been achieved by the influence of the various religious creeds and by traditions and superstitions which made men submit to those forces by an appeal to his emotions rather than to his reason. The most dangerous stage in the growth of civilization may well be that in which man has come to regard all these beliefs as superstitions and refuses to accept or to submit to anything which he does not rationally understand. The rationalist whose reason is not sufficient to teach him those limitations of the powers of conscious reason, and who despises all the institutions and customs which have not been consciously designed, would thus become the destroyer of the civilization built upon them. This may well prove a hurdle which man will repeatedly reach, only to be thrown back into barbarism... Common acceptance of formal rules is indeed the only alternative to direction by a single will man has yet discovered.

68. There are two ways of looking at the pattern of human activities which lead to very different conclusions concerning both its explanation and the possibilities of deliberately altering it. Of these one is based on conceptions which are demonstrably false, yet are so pleasing to human vanity that they have gained great influence and are constantly employed even by people who know that they rest on a fiction, but believe that fiction to be innocuous. The other, although few people will question its basic contentions if they are stated abstractly, leads in some respects to conclusions so unwelcome that few are willing to follow through to the end. The first gives us a sense of unlimited power to realize our wishes, while the second leads to the insight that there are limitations to what we can deliberately bring about, and to the recognition that some of our present hopes are delusions. Yet the effect of allowing ourselves to be deluded by the first view has always been that man has actually limited the scope of what he can achieve. For it has always been the recognition of the limits of the possible which has enabled man to make full use of his powers.

69. Now to Some it appears not at all worth while to follow out the endless divisions of Nature; and moreover a dangerous undertaking, without fruit and issue. As we can never reach, say they, the absolutely smallest grain of material bodies, never find their simplest compartments, since all magnitude loses itself, forwards and backwards, in infinitude; so likewise is it with the species of bodies and powers; here too one comes on new species, new combinations, new appearances, even to infinitude. These seem only to stop, continue they, when our diligence tires; and so it is spending precious time with idle contemplations and tedious enumerations; and this becomes at last a true delirium, a real vertigo over the horrid Deep

70. To me, the truth is what actually happened. Yet it is impossible to know anything approaching the whole truth about past events. Even the people living them could not possibly understand. That truth is always out of reach

71. You must be careful. You must never know things you couldn't possibly know. It makes people upset

72. I try to keep my head up, and still keep from gettin wet up/You know it's funny when it rains it pours

73. As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

74. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven.

75. Despite the hundreds of attempts, police terror and the concentration camps have proved to be more or less impossible subjects for the artist; since what happened in them was beyond the imagination, it was therefore also beyond art and all those human values on which art is traditionally based.

76. Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. The limitation, and the basis arising from what is already actual, are both of them necessary and interconnected.

77. Twice, adv. Once too often.

78. Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects.

79. Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.

80. Clarke's Second Law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

81. We have abolished space here on the little Earth; we can never abolish the space that yawns between the stars. Once again, as in the days when Homer sang, we are face-to-face with immensity and must accept its grandeur and terror, its inspiring possibilities and its dreadful restraints.

82. When you are next out of doors on a summer night, turn your head towards the zenith. Almost vertically above you will be shining the brightest star of the northern skies - Vega of the Lyre, twenty-six years away at the speed of light, near enough to the point of no return for us short-lived creatures. Past this blue-white beacon, fifty times as brilliant as our sun, we may send our minds and bodies, but never our hearts. For no man will ever turn homewards beyond Vega, to greet again those he knew and loved on Earth.

83. Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

84. Physics has in the main contented itself with studying the abridged edition of the book of nature.

85. I laid out memory so the bottom 640K was general purpose RAM and the upper 384 I reserved for video and ROM, and things like that. That is why they talk about the 640K limit. It is actually a limit, not of the software, in any way, shape, or form, it is the limit of the microprocessor. That thing generates addresses, 20-bits addresses, that only can address a megabyte of memory. And, therefore, all the applications are tied to that limit. It was ten times what we had before. But to my surprise, we ran out of that address base for applications within-oh five or six years people were complaining.

86. 640K ought to be enough for anybody.

87. Money is not going to organize the disadvantaged, the powerless, or the poor. We need other weapons. That's why the War on Poverty is such a miserable failure. You put out a big pot of money and all you do is fight over it. Then you run out of money and you run out of troops.

88. One more drink and I'd have been under the host.

89. You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

90. No court can make time stand still.

91. The end is low, like all quantitative ends, personal or not, and it can be attained and verified.

92. Le plus grand defaut de la penetration n'est pas de n'aller point jusqu'au but, c'est de le passer.

93. I'll play what you want or I won't play at all.

94. I want a government small enough to fit inside the Constitution.

95. Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so.

96. Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer. (Preface, A vii)

97. Reason can never prove the existence of God.

98. Rochester: That's for me. I can't stand the sight of blood.

99. Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.

100. She knew what she knew, like a sound dogmatist: she did not know what she did not - like a sound agnostic.