Preface
For following Sir Winston’s advice taken for the epigraph, there are many quote
collections available, both in print and online—see, e.g., the list of references at the
end of this publication. However, I could not find a collection that would be, to my
taste, reasonably comprehensive, at the same time being sufficiently refined for a
typical busy member of the science/engineering community, to which I belong.
This is why I dare to offer this community (including students of STEM disciplines)
a modest set of less than 2500 my personal favorites, accumulated over nearly a
decade of bedtime reading.
These quotes (on quite a few topics, not just science and engineering per se)
have been selected for either their importance for the community, or depth of
thought, or wit—or all of the above. Any selection implies a certain bias, but this
collection still includes different perspectives—in my humble view, all non-trivial
—on quite a few debatable issues.
To make consecutive reading of the quotes more engaging, the entries are not
only grouped into topical sections, but also thematically ordered inside each section, forming quasi-continuous narrative threads. The unavoidable twists and turns
and (less frequent) breaks of the threads are marked with three-asterisk lines.
The text and the authorship of each quote have been carefully verified.
1 If the
time of its first publication (sometimes posthumous) could be established, it is given
after the author’s name; if not, some idea of its timing may be obtained from the
years of author’s life, listed in the Author Index, and also from my footnote
comments. Since most of these comments address the authorship and timing issues,
they may be safely ignored by the reader interested only in the quote contents.
South Setauket, NY, USA
Konstantin K. Likharev
1
An entry was included into the final set only if it had been found either in the original publication,
or in at least two reliable quote collections. (Of the online sources I had explored, I held only
Libquotes, Quote Investigator, and Wikiquotes in this category).
vii
For following Sir Winston’s advice taken for the epigraph, there are many quote
collections available, both in print and online—see, e.g., the list of references at the
end of this publication. However, I could not find a collection that would be, to my
taste, reasonably comprehensive, at the same time being sufficiently refined for a
typical busy member of the science/engineering community, to which I belong.
This is why I dare to offer this community (including students of STEM disciplines)
a modest set of less than 2500 my personal favorites, accumulated over nearly a
decade of bedtime reading.
These quotes (on quite a few topics, not just science and engineering per se)
have been selected for either their importance for the community, or depth of
thought, or wit—or all of the above. Any selection implies a certain bias, but this
collection still includes different perspectives—in my humble view, all non-trivial
—on quite a few debatable issues.
To make consecutive reading of the quotes more engaging, the entries are not
only grouped into topical sections, but also thematically ordered inside each section, forming quasi-continuous narrative threads. The unavoidable twists and turns
and (less frequent) breaks of the threads are marked with three-asterisk lines.
The text and the authorship of each quote have been carefully verified.
1 If the
time of its first publication (sometimes posthumous) could be established, it is given
after the author’s name; if not, some idea of its timing may be obtained from the
years of author’s life, listed in the Author Index, and also from my footnote
comments. Since most of these comments address the authorship and timing issues,
they may be safely ignored by the reader interested only in the quote contents.
South Setauket, NY, USA
Konstantin K. Likharev
1
An entry was included into the final set only if it had been found either in the original publication,
or in at least two reliable quote collections. (Of the online sources I had explored, I held only
Libquotes, Quote Investigator, and Wikiquotes in this category).
vii