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The cosmologist Fred Hoyle once warned Gell-Mann about the perils of fame. If you ever accomplish anything important in life, he said, the world will conspire to keep you from doing anything else again. Everyone wants you to give a speech, write an article, serve on a committee.

— George Johnson

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Fame

More quotes by George Johnson

Even if you invoke vast geologic time, the series of fortuitous mutations leading to an eye, a kidney, or a brain seem too good to be true.

While Robert Welch opposed the United Nations for supposedly encouraging obeisance to the one-world conspiracy, McIntire's fundamentalists saw it as a "house of red Babel."

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Artists shouldn't be made famous.

Kate Bush

Fame is a form—perhaps the worst form—of incomprehension.

Jorge Luis Borges The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)

Men the most infamous are fond of fame,
And those who fear not guilt yet start at shame.

Charles Churchill The Author (1763)

In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.

Andy Warhol

Attribution

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