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“If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us.”
Source : A.A. Gill (2008). “Previous Convictions: Assignments from Here and There”, p.80, Simon and Schuster
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“I value science--none can prize it more, It gives ten thousand motives to adore: Be it religious, as it ought to be, The heart it humbles, and it bows the knee.”
Source : Abraham Coles (1866). “The Microcosm: A Poem, Read Before the Medical Society of New Jersey at Its Centenary Anniversary: with the Address Delivered as President, Jan. 24, 1866”, p.22
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“[George] Uhlenbeck was a highly gifted physicist. One of his remarkable traits was he would read every issue of T%he Physical Review from cover to cover.”
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“Why don't you light that candle ?”
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“The university is our culture's assertion that what is made by the mind has value and can convey values.”
Source : A. Bartlett Giamatti (1981). “The University and the Public Interest”, Atheneum Books
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“The mind is like a river. The thoughts are like the various droplets of water. We are submerged in that water. Stay on the bank and watch your mind.”
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“You cannot have a good character today and at the same time have a small mind and a little heart. You cannot have a good character today and be merely a petty reformer.”
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“The minds of stone lovers had colonised stones as lichens clung to them with golden or grey-green florid stains. The human world of stones is caught in organic metaphors like flies in amber. Words came from flesh and hair and plants. Reniform, mammilated, botryoidal, dendrite, haematite. Carnelian is from carnal, from flesh. Serpentine and lizardite are stone reptiles ; phyllite is leafy-green.”
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“I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.”
Source : YouTube Channel "Jeff Gonis"/"Alan Kay at OOPSLA 1997 - The computer revolution hasnt happened yet", www.youtube.com. February 11, 2013. 
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“It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.”
