Analogy Archive

History's greatest analogies.

"Discovery consists in seeing an analogy which nobody had seen before." — Arthur Koestler

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"A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales." — Marie Curie (quoted in Eve Curie, Madame Curie, 1937)

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"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." — Francis Bacon (Essays, "Of Studies," 1625 edition)

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"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." — John Donne (Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII, 1624)

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@stevemagness "There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others." — Martha Graham (to Agnes de Mille, 1940s)

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@kwharrison13 "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" — Upton Sinclair (I, Candidate for Governor, 1935)

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@vkhosla @joinBunkerhill "Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." — Goethe (Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years, 1829)

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"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant." — Winston Churchill (Speech accepting the Sunday Times Literary Award, London, Nov 2, 1949)

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@Jayyanginspires "Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements." — Mary Schmich (Wear Sunscreen column, Chicago Tribune, 1997)

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@hnshah "There are no facts inside the building, so get the hell outside." — Steve Blank (Forbes, 2015)

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@rauchg "Less, but better." — Dieter Rams (Less but Better, 1995)

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@Nicolascole77 "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means." — Joan Didion (Why I Write, NYT Book Review, 1976)

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@arvidkahl "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." — Louis Brandeis (What Publicity Can Do, Harper's Weekly, 1913)

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"As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee." — Swami Vivekananda (quoting a Hindu hymn, Parliament of the World's Religions, Chicago, Sept 11, 1893)

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"Facts are the air of a scientist." — Ivan Pavlov (Bequest to Academic Youth, 1936)

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@noahkagan "The vital few and the trivial many." — Joseph M. Juran (The Management Review, 1954)

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@heyblake "I keep six honest serving-men... Their names are What and Where and When / And How and Why and Who." — Rudyard Kipling (Just So Stories, 1902)

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@Cmdr_Hadfield "The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." — Eden Phillpotts (A Shadow Passes, 1918)

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"Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." — Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot, on the Voyager 1 photo of Earth, 1994)

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"'Hope' is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul." — Emily Dickinson (Poem 254, c. 1861)

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@felixrieseberg "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." — Alfred North Whitehead (An Introduction to Mathematics, 1911)