Take Advice Further

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.
— Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), U.S. Scientist, quoted in The Mind of God & Other Musings: The Wisdom of Science, Shirley Jones (ed.), p. 74.

I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.
— Jonas Salk (b. 1914), U.S. Microbiologist, quoted in Ibid., p. 74.

Whatever a man does he must do first in his mind.
— Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893-1986), Hungarian-American Biochemist, quoted in Ibid., p.77.

Our intellectual endeavors, our whole science will be of no avail if they do not lead man to a better comprehension of himself, of the meaning of his life, and of the resources buried in his inner self.
— Lecomte du Nouy (1849-1919), French Scientist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 78.

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
— Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912), French Scientist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 79.

Man is inside his most important biological specimen, himself, and . . . from this strategic position he is able to learn many things that no amount of observation of other specimens ever could reveal.
— Edmund W. Sinnott (1888-1968), U.S. Biologist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 80.

In a free world, if it is to remain free, we must maintain, with our lives if need be, but surely by our lives, the opportunity for a man to learn anything.
— J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), U.S. Physicist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 80.

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box…. Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
— Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895), British Biologist,
quoted in Ibid., pp. 81-82.

Imagine the fifteen-billion-year lifetime of the universe compressed into the span of a single year…. Dinosaurs emerge on Christmas Eve; flowers arise on December 28th; and men and women originate at 10:30 P.M. on New Year’s Eve. All of recorded history occupies the last ten seconds of December 31….
— Carl Sagan (b. 1934), U.S. Astronomer,
quoted in Ibid., p. 93.

The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly.
— Thomas Alva Edison (18347-1931), U.S. Scientist,
quoted in Ibid., p. 95.

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this something, at whatever cost, must be attained.
— Marie Curie (1867-1934), Polish Chemist, quoted in Ibid., p. 114.

Life is short, art long, opportunity fugitive, experimenting dangerous, reasoning difficult…. To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.
— Hippocrates (460-400 B.C.), Greek “Father of Medicine,” quoted in Ibid., p. 126.