Wise nations

“Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives.”

- Abba Eban (1915-2002)

Achieving immortality

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.”

- Woody Allen

Kind word and a gun

“You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”

- Al Capone (1899-1947)

Death, the destroyer of worlds

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

- Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (citing from the Bhagavad Gita, after witnessing the world’s first nuclear explosion)

Simple as possible

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Mistakes waiting to be made

“The mistakes are all waiting to be made.”

- chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game’s opening position

The residue of design

“Luck is the residue of design.”

- Branch Rickey – former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team

The secret of a long and happy life

“Fill what’s empty, empty what’s full, and scratch where it itches.”

- Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, when asked what is the secret of a long and happy life

Success

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it”

- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Discovering our ignorance

“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”

- Will Durant