"As I reflect on the scientific careers of the people I have known these last thirty years, it seems to me more and more that these career decisions hinge on character. Some people will happily jump on the next big thing, give it all they've got, and in this way make important contributions to fast-moving fields. Others just don't have the temperament to do this. Some people need to think through everything very carefully, and this takes time, as they get easily confused. It's not hard to feel superior to such people, until you remember that Einstein was one of them. In my experience, the truly shocking new ideas and innovations tend to come from such people. Still others - and I belong to this third group - just have to go their own way, and will flee fields for no better reason than that it offends them that some people are joining in because it feels good to be on the winning side. So I no longer get bothered when I disagree with what other people are doing, because I see that temperament pretty much determines what kind of science they will do. Luckily for science, the contributions of the whole range of types are needed. Those who do good science, I've come to think, do so because they choose problems that are suited to them."
"Poets, philosophers, acidheads, salesmen: everybody wants to know, 'What is Reality?' Some say it's a vast Unknowable so astounding and raw and naked that it grips the human mind and shakes it like a puppy shakes a rag doll. A lot of good that does us."
-- The Book of the SubGenius
"When they discovered that reality was more complicated than they thought, they just swept the complexity under a carpet of epicycles. That is, they created unnecessary complexity. This is an important point. The universe is complex, but it's usefully complex."
-- Larry Wall
"I can't imagine a more complete and precise answer to the question 'for what reason...?' than 'none'. The fact that you don't like the answer is your problem, not the universe's."
-- Lee Daniel Crocker
"In the end they all moved in fantasies and not in the daily tide of their seemingly useless lives. Souls forever lost in the terrifying freedom of their existence."
-- Shinji and Warhammer40k
"Thus the freer the judgement of a man is in regard to a definite issue, with so much greater necessity will the substance of this judgement be determined."
-- Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring
"There will always be some that cannot be saved.
It is impossible to save everyone.
If I have to lose five hundred to earn one thousand,
I will abandon one hundred and save the lives of nine hundred.
That is the most efficient method.
That is the ideal----
Kiritsugu once said that.
Of course I got mad.
I really got mad.
Because I knew that without being told.
Because I myself was saved like that.
I don't even need to be told something as obvious as that.
But still----I believed that someone would be a superhero if they saved everyone even though they think like that.
It may be an idealistic thought or an impossible pipe dream, but a superhero is someone who tries to save everyone in spite of that."
-- Emiya Shirou, in Fate/stay night
(visual novel by Kinoko Nasu; Unlimited Blade Works path, Mirror Moon translation)