Presented here are many quotes in which I find interesting. This is inspired by Terence Tao's website.

Mathematics

• "In mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them." - John von Neumann
• "Truth... is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations." - John von Neumann
• "All models are wrong, but some are useful." - George Box
• "Insofar as theories of mathematics speak about reality, they are not certain, and insofar as they are certain, they do not speak about reality." - Albert Einstein
• "If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is." - John von Neumann
• "The total subject of mathematics is clearly too broad for any one of us... It would therefore, be quite unrealistic not to admit, that [I] would not be biased towards some areas in mathematics... to the detriment of others which may be equally or more important." - John von Neumann
• "The kind of knowledge which is supported only by observations and is not yet proved must be carefully distinguished from the truth; it is gained by induction, as we usually say. Yet we have seen cases in which mere induction led to error." - Leonhard Euler
  • An important follow-up: "We should use such discovery as an opportunity to investigate more exactly the properties discovered and to prove or disprove them; in both cases we may learn something useful." - Leonhard Euler
• "I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them." - Carl Friedrich Gauss
• "Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics." - David Hilbert
• "The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal themselves in all their beauty only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it." - Carl Friedrich Gauss

Sciences & Engineering

• "The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish these properties by experiment, and then to proceed more slowly to hypothesis for the explanation of them." - Isaac Newton
• "I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern, when all of a sudden, a thought occurred to me: If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight. I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation." - Albert Einstein
• "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered. The point is to discover them." - Galileo Galilei
• "It is not unscientific to make a guess, although many people who are not in science think it is." - Richard Feynman
• "Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless." - Thomas Edison
• "Keep it simple, stupid." - U.S. Navy
• "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Engineering adage

Education

• "[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books... The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think." - Albert Einstein
  • In response to not knowing the speed of sound.
• "The art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems." - Georg Cantor
• "No child left behind." - Title of a 2001 statute by the 107th United States Congress
• "You are not just a teacher... you are THE teacher!" - Casey Cuny
• "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin
• "I don't know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough." - Richard Feynman
• "If you want to master something, teach it." - Richard Feynman

Life, Morals, & Ethics

• "Rejection is redirection." - Popular mantra
• "If you're tired of starting over, then stop giving up." - Shia LaBeouf
• "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." - Viktor Frankl
• "If I have done the public any service... 'tis due to nothing but industry and a patient thought." - Isaac Newton
• "As long as you will have a feeling of shame, you will not lightly commit sins." - Moses
• "And whosoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved the entire world." - Talmud (Jewish text)
• "You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." - Mahatma Gandhi
• "Even statues crack, and when you fall, no one will dare to catch you." - Anonymous
• "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."
  • Often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, though its first appearance is an advertisement.
• "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of strong." - Mahatma Gandhi

Religion

• "What is the purpose of Life? — Proof and conjecture, and keep the [Supreme Fascist]'s score low." - Paul Erdős
  • "Supreme Fascist" refers to God.
  • "If you do something bad the SF gets at least two points. If you don't do something good which you could have done, the SF gets at least one point... The aim is to keep the SF's score low." - Paul Erdős
• "Sir, an equation has no meaning for me unless it expresses a thought of GOD." - Srinivasa Ramanujan
• "There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn't." - John von Neumann
• "In reality, there are as many religions as there are individuals." - Mahatma Gandhi
• "I don't reject Christ. I love Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ." - Mahatma Gandhi
• "It's storytelling. This church building... has more in common with Disneyland than Notre Dame. And the rites and the rituals and the costumes... all of it. It's storytelling. I guess the question is, do these stories convince us of a lie? Or do they resonate with something deep inside us that is profoundly true... that we can't express any other way except storytelling?" - Wake Up Dead Man

Meta-Quotes

• "It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err." - Mahatma Gandhi
• "A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire