Three passions, simple but overwhelming, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. – Bertrand Russell, Autobiography, 1967

It is a mistake to imagine that potentially great men are rare. It is the conditions that permit the promise of greatness to be fulfilled that are rare. What is so difficult to achieve is the cultural background that permits potential greatness to be converted into actual greatness. – Fred Hoyle, Of Man and Galaxies

It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. – Robert Louis Stevenson, “Crabbed Age and Youth,” Virginibus Puerisque, 1881