"The Earth is the Cradle of the Mind, but you cannot stay in the cradle forever." -- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." -- Werner Von Braun
"Problems worthy of attack
Prove their worth by hitting back."--Piet Hein
"The Heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight;
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night."
--Wordsworth (I think)
"The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it.
"This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain."
--C.S. LEWIS
Oration at University of London, 1944
THE INNER RING
"All things, by immortal power,
Near or far, hiddenly to each other linked are;
That thou canst not touch a flower
Without troubling a star."
--Francis Thompson, The Mistress of Vision
--Boris
"Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain."
--Freiderich von Schiller, The Maid of Orleans