Spurting Science Quotes & Sayings

I certainly wish Gov. Palin no harm. I'd just like her to explain to me how she can hold such outrageous views ... and then go back to Alaska. — Sandra Bernhard

Still, small heavenly voices penetrate the heart with their gentle, convincing declarations ... Most often, hope, encouragement, and direction come from a soft, piercing voice. Small voices are heard only by those who are willing to listen. — Marvin J. Ashton

In 2004 our forty-second president, George W. Bush, the leader of the free world, proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to forever ban gay marriage
which was already illegal. In opinion polls, about 50 percent of this country said they thought Bush had the right idea. If half this country feels so threatened by two people of the same gender being in love and having sex (and, incidentally, enjoying equal protection under the law), that they turn their attention
during wartime
to blocking rights already denied to homosexuals, then all the cardio striptease classes in the world aren't going to render us sexually liberated. — Ariel Levy

In Georgian England, sweeps and climbing-boys were regarded as general cesspools of disease - dirty, consumptive, syphilitic, pox-ridden - and a "ragged, ill-looking sore," easily attributed to some sexually transmitted illness, was usually treated with a toxic mercury-based chemical and otherwise shrugged off. ("Syphilis," as the saying ran, "was one night with Venus, followed by a thousand nights with mercury.") — Siddhartha Mukherjee

You might live on top of the biggest toxic waste dump on the planet, but if you never dig, then all you ever know is that your grass is green and your garden is lush. — Jodi Picoult

TO YOUR KNEES Life will eventually bring you to your knees. Either you'll be on your knees cursing the universe and begging for a different life, or you'll be brought to your knees by gratitude and awe, deeply embracing the life that you have, too overwhelmed by the beauty of it all to stand or even speak. Either way, they're the same knees. — Jeff Foster

They were men like other young men, unknown to themselves. So much that lay within them they were now travelling to meet. — Richard Flanagan

I turned on the pillow with a little moan, and at this juncture Jeeves entered with the vital oolong. I clutched at it like a drowning man at a straw hat. — P.G. Wodehouse

Sigh. These were my people now that I was a writer, people who didn't understand anything. I mean, they understood perfectly the thing I cared most about - books - but basically were moron-level elsewhere. — Claire Dederer

Economists love to talk about incentives, but the bottom line is that people hate being controlled or manipulated, even when done through voluntary institutions. This is one of the most important tensions in capitalism. — Tyler Cowen

There was this gate and it was just some rusty gate but I knew I had to get through it. The only way forward is through. Who said that? I had to get through it, if I didn't I would die, get cut open, sliced with a knife from the neck right down to labia with me screaming all the time, I just had to get through the fucking gate. — Marlon James