Quotations

"There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi." - Luis Walter Alvarez, American physicist, 1911-88

"A monarch is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft which would never sink, but then your feet are always in the water." - Fisher Ames, American politician, 1758-1808

"He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic." - Kingsley Amis, English novelist and poet, 1922-95, from his book One Fat Englishman