Christiaan Quotes

#1. Christiaan Huygens became simultaneously adept in languages, drawing, law, science, engineering, mathematics and music. His interests and allegiances were broad. "The world is my country," he said, "science my religion.

Carl Sagan

#2. Mother often said that she could never be bothered to understand why Alice did the things she did, and now, more than ever, Alice thought never being bothered was a very lazy way to love someone.

Tahereh Mafi

#3. I don't believe medical discoveries are doing much to advance human life. As fast as we create ways to extend it we are inventing ways to shorten it.

Christiaan Barnard

#4. There are many degrees of Probable, some nearer Truth than others, in the determining of which lies the chief exercise of our Judgment.

Christiaan Huygens

#5. Coltrane's labyrinthine solo plays on in my ears, never ending.

Haruki Murakami

#6. One may conceive light to spread successively, by spherical waves.

Christiaan Huygens

#7. Now since in so many Things they ... agree, what can be more probable than that in others they agree too; and that the other Planets are as beautiful and as well stock'd with Inhabitants as the Earth? Or what shadow of Reason can there be why they should not?

Christiaan Huygens

#8. For myself, I believed that that 13th of March should see a fight to the finish, cost what it might! for if Bloemfontein was to be taken, it would only be over our dead bodies.

Christiaan Rudolf De Wet

#9. On Saturday, I was a surgeon in South Africa, very little known. On Monday, I was world renowned.

Christiaan Barnard

#10. Naturally our Government would not consent to such terms, and so the war had to proceed.

Christiaan Rudolf De Wet

#11. In a room where
people unanimously maintain
a conspiracy of silence,
one word of truth
sounds like a pistol shot.

Czeslaw Milosz

#12. The world is my country, science is my religion.

Christiaan Huygens

#13. We shall be less apt to admire what this World calls Great, shall nobly despise those Trifles the generality of Men set their Affections on, when we know that there are a multitude of such Earths inhabited and adorned as Well as our own.

Christiaan Huygens

#14. ... He is most glorified by those in whom His mercy has produced the greatest love.

Thomas Merton

#15. If the poor overweight jogger only knew how far he had to run to work off the calories in a crust of bread he might find it better in terms of pound per mile to go to a massage parlor.

Christiaan Barnard

#16. I had not thought of this regular decrease of gravity, namely that it is as the inverse square of the distance; this is a new and highly remarkable property of gravity.

Christiaan Huygens

#17. I esteem his understanding and subtlety highly, but I consider that they have been put to ill use in the greater part of his work, where the author studies things of little use...

{Writing about Isaac Newton}

Christiaan Huygens

#18. The world is my country. Science my religion.

Christiaan Huygens

#19. I believe often that death is good medical treatment because it can achieve what all the medical advances and technology cannot achieve today, and that is stop the suffering of the patient.

Christiaan Barnard

#20. Here we may mount from this dull Earth, and viewing it from on high, consider whether Nature has laid out all her Cost and Finery upon this small Speck of Dirt.

Christiaan Huygens

#21. Suffering isn't ennobling, recovery is.

Christiaan Barnard

#22. I should create a TV show called 61 Minutes. It'll be like 60 Minutes - only more.

Jarod Kintz

#23. The prime goal is to alleviate suffering, and not to prolong life. And if your treatment does not alleviate suffering, but only prolongs life, that treatment should be stopped.

Christiaan Barnard

#24. The condition of the wounded touched my heart deeply.

Christiaan Rudolf De Wet

#25. A piety that sees death as the moment of "going home at last," the time when we are "called to God's eternal peace," has no quarrel with power-mongers who want to carve up the world to suit their own ends.

N. T. Wright

#26. The rest of the planets have their dress and furniture, nay and their inhabitants too, as well as this Earth of ours.

Christiaan Huygens

#27. I do not mind at all that [Newton] is not a Cartesian provided he does not offer us suppositions like that of attraction.

Christiaan Huygens

#28. I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably.

Christiaan Huygens

#29. It's evident God had no design to make a particular Enumeration in the Holy Scriptures, of all the Works of his Creation.

Christiaan Huygens

#30. These deserters were our undoing. I shall have a good deal more to say about them before I finally lay down my pen, and I shall not hesitate to call them by their true name, the name with which they will be for ever branded before all the nations of the world.

Christiaan Rudolf De Wet

#31. It is surrounded by a thin flat ring, inclined to the ecliptic, and nowhere touches the body of the planet.

Christiaan Huygens

#32. These Gentlemen must be told, that they take too much upon themselves when they pretend to appoint how far and no farther Men shall go in their Searches, and to set bounds to other Mens Industry; as if they knew the Marks that God has placed to Knowledge ...

Christiaan Huygens

#33. Great difficulties are felt at first and these cannot be overcome except by starting from experiments .. and then be conceiving certain hypotheses ... But even so, very much hard work remains to be done and one needs not only great perspicacity but often a degree of good fortune.

Christiaan Huygens

#34. The individual is the brain, not the heart.

Christiaan Barnard

#35. Either you are a feminist or you are a sexist/misogynist. There is no box marked 'other.'

Ani DiFranco

#36. It is infinitely better to transplant a heart than to bury it to be devoured by worms.

Christiaan Barnard