"The best policy is to declare victory and leave."

“Progress in computer science is made with the distribution of revolutionary software systems and the publication of revolutionary books. We don't need a fancy information system to alert us to these grand events; they will hit us in the face. Another good excuse for ignoring the literature is that, since everyone has strong beliefs about fundamentals but can't support those beliefs rationally or consistently convince non-believers, computer science is actually a religion.”

“Young kids are taking Viagra, ecstasy. They even want instant sex.”

“All you have the right to ask of life is to choose a battle in this war, make the best you can, and leave the field with honor.”

Source : LEON URIS (1961). “MILA 18”

“There is something solid and doughty in the man that can rise from defeat, the stuff of which victories are made in due time, when we are able to choose our position better, and the sun is at our back.”

“Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them. He must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.”

Source : Francis Parkman, David Levin (1983). “France and England in North America: Pioneers of France in the New World. The Jesuits of North America in the seventeenth century. La Salle and the discovery of the Great West. The old régime in Canada”, p.16, Library of America

“It was entirely due to my mother [a devout Buddhist] and her kindness and perseverance that the family was saved from utter ruin. For a period of 17 years--from the age of 9 until I was 25 years old--my mother never spent a day free from domestic difficulties.”

“What does it mean, exactly, for a given system to be a "neural correlate of consciousness"?”

“I'm very uncomfortable about the way I look but confident as a man.”

Source : "Is this it?". The Guardian Interview, www.theguardian.com. August 15, 2008.