“In the matter of physics, the first lessons should contain nothing but what is experimental and interesting to see. A pretty experiment is in itself often more valuable than twenty formulae extracted from our minds.”

“Either CS (coordinate system) could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: the sun is at rest and the earth moves, or the sun moves and the earth is at rest, would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS”

“Engineering is not only study of 45 subjects but it is moral studies of intellectual life. Make things as simple as possible..but not simpler.”

“Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.”

“Games are the most elevated form of investigation.”

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“The world leaves no track in space, and the greatest action of man no mark in the vast idea.”

“The astronomers said, 'Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces.' ... There is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball.”

“Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face! I had rather lie in the woolen.”

“There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail.”

“I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster”

“He was not so much brain as earwax”

“There is two types of Larceny, Petty and Grand. They are supposed to be the same in the eyes of the law, but judges always put a little extra on you for Petty, which is kind of a fine for stupidness.”

“For my part, I am very much more afraid of the man who does a bad thing and does not know it is bad than of the man who does a bad thing and knows it is bad; because I think that in public affairs stupidity is more dangerous than knavery, because harder to fight and dislodge.”