The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.

Working ten hour days allows you to fall behind twice as fast as you could working five hour days.

Uncertainty that comes from knowledge (knowing what you don't know) is different from uncertainty coming from ignorance.

Oh, for a pin that would puncture pretension!

And [Asimov]'ll sign anything, hardbacks, softbacks, other people's books, scraps of paper. Inevitably someone handed him a blank check on the occasion when I was there, and he signed that without as much as a waver to his smile — except that he signed: 'Harlan Ellison.

During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.