There are years that ask questions and years that answer. – Zora Neale Hurston

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The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish.

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It is a thousand times more sensible to climb one foot up the mountainside than to chatter for years about the mountaintop.

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A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death.

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It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else. Sometimes it is years before I see the way forward. In the case of information loss and black holes, it was 29 years.

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Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Whatever you're scared of doing, Do it.

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We're all brilliant at something. I discovered my powers when I was four years old. When you're young you're more in touch with your real talents, but so often the 30 year slog knocks it out of people.

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Real intelligence must be fiercely capable of investigating every aspect of existence, including the very process of knowledge that we call science .

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It's a remarkable exercise to sit and look at your own work over the years.

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I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man. — Joe Biden

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