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If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.

— Tom Stoppard Arcadia (1993)

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Science

More quotes by Tom Stoppard

An artist is the magician put among men to gratify — capriciously — their urge for immortality.

Travesties (1974)

Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering; the capacity for self-indulgence changes hands.

Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966)

I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.

An essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.

Travesties (1974)

It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.

Arcadia (1993)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Tom Stoppard (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.