Overbye Quotes & Sayings

In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible ; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. — Baruch Spinoza

Although Penzias and Wilson had not been looking for cosmic background radiation, didn't know what it was when they had found it, and hadn't described or interpreted its character in any paper, they received the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics. The Princeton researchers got only sympathy. According to Dennis Overbye in Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, neither Penzias nor Wilson altogether understood the significance of what they had found until they read about it in the New York Times. — Bill Bryson

There's always a faster gun. — Dennis Overbye

In order to fly you have to create space in the open air so that your wings can really spread out. It's like a parachute. They only work from a high altitude. To fly you have to begin taking risks. If you don't want to, maybe the best thing is just to give up, and keep walking forever. — Jorge Bucay

On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" Now let's look at how Einstein articulated all of this in the famous paper that the Annalen der Physik received on June 30, 1905. For all its momentous import, it may be one of the most spunky and enjoyable papers in all of science. Most of its insights are conveyed in words and vivid thought experiments, rather than in complex equations. There is some math involved, but it is mainly what a good high school senior could comprehend. "The whole paper is a testament to the power of simple language to convey deep and powerfully disturbing ideas," says the science writer Dennis Overbye. — Walter Isaacson

For there is a price ticket on everything that puts a whizz into life, and adventure follows the rule. It's distressing, but there you are. — Leslie Charteris

I knew I was the second-best tennis player in the state of Florida and No. 8 in the United States of America when I was 12 years old and I couldn't tell you what I was in baseball, but I liked my chances in tennis of getting a scholarship to college. — Jim Courier

No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing. — Otto Von Bismarck

Anything but the void. And so we keep hoping to luck into a winning combination, to tap into a subtle harmony, trying like lock pickers to negotiate a compromise with the 'mystery tramp,' as Bob Dylan put it ... — Dennis Overbye

The swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people whether they get the offices or no ... when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart ... and when servility by town or state or the federal government or any oppression on a large scale or small scale can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion against the smallest chance of escape ... or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth - then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth. — Walt Whitman

Our five sense are dulled by inordinate pleasure. Penance makes them keen, gives them back their natural vitality, and more. Penance clears the eye of conscience and of reason. — Thomas Merton

Before the first atomic bomb test, scientists took the time to calculate whether the blast would ignite the nitrogen in Earth's atmosphere and incinerate us all. The risk was low and the test went off, but Rees wonders what the odds would have had to be to discourage the bomb makers. — Dennis Overbye

Few sights in science are sadder than astronomers standing in the rain. — Dennis Overbye

The need for a college education is even more important now than it was before, but I think that the increased costs are a very severe obstacle to access. It is an American dream, and I think that one of our challenges is to find a way to make that available. — Roy Romer

The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes. — Herman Melville

If God came to India, he'd have to come as bread. If God came to Willoughby union he'd have to came as what? — Garret Keizer

Regarding the Laws of Thermodynamics: (1) You can't win, (2) you can't break even, and (3) you can't get out of the game. — Dennis Overbye

Carnal love is the love of table, not of the host. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Men are four;
He who knows and knows not that he knows. He is asleep; wake him.
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not. He is a fool; shun him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not. He is a child; teach him.
He who knows and knows that he knows. He is a king; follow him.
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. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

She knew there were only small joys in life
the big ones were too complicated to be joys when you got all through
and once you realized that, it took a lot of the pressure off. — Lorrie Moore

Just about every generation has some horrific evil that it must fight. For the Democratic Party today that evil is carbon dioxide emissions. For the rest of us, it is an ideology that teaches that its deity is sanctified by the blood of innocents. — Dennis Prager

It's people who are repressed and cannot express their fears that are dangerous. — Julie Taymor

Cosmology is serious business and in our hearts we are nothing if not cosmologists, hanging in a cold cage sifting the ruthless jewels of existence. — Dennis Overbye