Classic Quotes by Vannevar Bush

1890-1974

American electrical engineer and physicist

A belief may be larger than a fact. A faith that is overdefined is the very faith most likely to prove inadequate to the great moments of life.

Fear cannot be banished, but it can be calm and without panic; it can be mitigated by reason and evaluation.

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One
might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.

Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission.

The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability, and something is bound to come of it.
  

Classic Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes

1841-1935

American Jurist

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.

A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.

A new untruth is better than an old truth.

A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time.

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts
and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances
and time in which it is used.

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at the peril of being not to have lived.

Classic Quotes by Luther Burbank

1849-1926

American Horticulturist

Do not feed children on maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion; give them nature.

Heredity is nothing but stored environment.

I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing
and selection. In the span of my own lifetime I observed such wondrous progress in plant evolution that I look forward optimistically to a healthy, happy
world as soon as its children are taught the principles of simple and rational living. We must return to nature and nature’s god.

Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.

The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.

The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead.

If we had paid no more attention to our plants than we have to our children, we would now be living in a jungle of weed.

Nature’s law affirm instead of prohibit. If you violate her laws, you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman.
  

Classic Quotes by Cyrano de Bergerac

(1619-1655

French novelist

A large nose is the mark of a witty, courteous, affable, generous and liberal man.

A kiss is a rosy dot over the ‘i’ of loving.

The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire
merely to ripen men’s apples and head their cabbages.

I may climb perhaps to no great heights, but I will climb alone.

Perish the Universe, provided I have my revenge.
  

Classic Quotes by Rosa Luxemburg

1871-1919

German revolutionary

The high stage of world-industrial development in capitalistic production finds expression in the extraordinary technical development and destructiveness
of the instruments of war.

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution,
becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.