Straight Lines Quotes (2 quotes)
Everything you�ve learned in school as �obvious� becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There�s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
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Professor Cayley has since informed me that the theorem about whose origin I was in doubt, will be found in Schl�fli�s De Eliminatione. This is not the first unconscious plagiarism I have been guilty of towards this eminent man whose friendship I am proud to claim. A more glaring case occurs in a note by me in the Comptes Rendus, on the twenty-seven straight lines of cubic surfaces, where I believe I have followed (like one walking in his sleep), down to the very nomenclature and notation, the substance of a portion of a paper inserted by Schlafli in the Mathematical Journal, which bears my name as one of the editors upon the face.
In Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1864), 642.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
