Perpetual Motion Quotes

• I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened.

  Steven Spielberg

  Israel, Favors, Responding

  "Spielberg: Israel Entitled to Strong Response". Time Magazine Interview, www.ynetnews.com. June 12, 2005.

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Fear, Mind, Desire

  Thomas Hobbes (2008). “Leviathan”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• O speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest? Go and take your place with the seekers after gold.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Gold, Quests, Vain

  Leonardo (da Vinci) (1906). “Note Books: Arranged and Rendered Into English, with Introd”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The human body is a machine that winds up its own springs: it is a living image of the perpetual motion.

  Julien Offray de La Mettrie

  Spring, Wind, Machines

  26 Copy quote

• Since a given system can never of its own accord go over into another equally probable state but into a more probable one, it is likewise impossible to construct a system of bodies that after traversing various states returns periodically to its original state, that is a perpetual motion machine.

  Ludwig Boltzmann

  Machines, Body, Return

  22 Copy quote

• To think to keep things as they are, is to let them move unpredictably, since nothing but death will still the beat of the heart or keep the universe from its perpetual motion.

  Freya Stark

  Moving, Heart, Thinking

  Freya Stark (2011). “The Lycian Shore”, p.27, Tauris Parke Paperbacks

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them?

  Bob Dylan

  Art, Inspire, Purpose

  Interview with Jonathan Cott, www.rollingstone.com. January 26, 1978.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Fire, Perpetual, Cease

  "The Moral Maxims and Reflections". Book by François de La Rochefoucauld. Maxim 75, 1678.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• According to their [Newton and his followers] doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion. Nay, the machine of God's making, so imperfect, according to these gentlemen; that he is obliged to clean it now and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it, as clockmaker mends his work.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  God, Moving, Wind

  9 Copy quote

• Dilbert: I'm obsessed with inventing a perpetual motion machine. Most scientists think it's impossible, but I have something they don't. Dogbert: A lot of spare time? Dilbert: Exactly.

  Scott Adams

  Science, Thinking, Machines

  3 Copy quote

• In whatever system where the weight attached to the wheel should be the cause of motion of the wheel, without any doubt the center of the gravity of the weight will stop beneath the center of its axle. No instrument devised by human ingenuity, which turns with its wheel, can remedy this effect. Oh, speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest. Go and take you place with the seekers after gold.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Doubt, Gold, Causes

  4 Copy quote

• Marketing's job is never done. It's about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day.

  Beth Comstock

  Jobs, Business, Innovation

  "The quest for more creative, ambitious marketing - read the webchat again" by Matthew Caines, www.theguardian.com. April 27, 2016.

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everything is in constant flux, from state to state, from good to bad and back again... only in transmutation, perpetual motion, lies truth.

  Asger Jorn

  Lying, Flux, States

  "Asger Jorn" by Arken Museum of Modern Art, (p. 76), 2002.

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• I liked it. I liked her. And every time I saw her, she seemed more beautiful. She just seemed to glow. I'm not talking like a hundred-watt bulb; she just had this warmth to her. Maybe it came from climbing that tree. Maybe it came from singing to chickens. Maybe it came from whacking at two-by-fours and dreaming about perpetual motion. I don't know. All I know is that compared to her, Shelly and Miranda seemed so...ordinary.

  Wendelin Van Draanen

  Beautiful, Dream, Climbing

  51 Copy quote

• We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.

  Stephen Nachmanovitch

  World, Surprise, Depends

  Stephen Nachmanovitch (1991). “Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art”, p.22, Penguin

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Existence is perpetual motion. Galileo wondered about it, Da Vinci.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Awareness, Existence

  3 Copy quote

• Evangelical agencies with ready funding may have too little depth and vision to cope with the current conflict. God's kingdom is built not on perpetual motion, one-liners, and flashbulbs but on Christ.

  Carl F. H. Henry

  Agency, Vision, Depth

  7 Copy quote

• Your partner cannot fault you for refusing to host a perpetual-motion party or for the fact that you must sleep and will eventually die.

  Mallory Ortberg

  Party, Sleep, Faults

  "Do It for the Kids". Chat live with readers, www.slate.com. December 21, 2015.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

  William Shakespeare

  Success, Rust, Perpetual

  'Henry IV, Part 2' (1597) act 1, sc. 2, l. [247]

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• All things are made of atoms - little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Distance, Moving, Knowledge

  "The Feynman Lectures on Physics". Physics textbook by Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands, volume I; lecture 1, "Atoms in Motion"; section 1-2, "Matter is made of atoms"; p. 1-2, 1964.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened. At the same time, a response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual-motion machine.

  Steven Spielberg

  Israel, Machines, Favors

  6 Copy quote

• Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in government, more likely to succeed in a new soil, but likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on its own merits as others have done before it. For there is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics.

  James Russell Lowell

  Fall, Government, Democracy

  William Makepeace Thackeray, John Henry Newman, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, Walter Bagehot (1910). “Essays, English and American: With Introductions and Notes”

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Is there anything more terrible than perpetual motion, than doing and doing and doing, without a reason, without a consciousness, without a change, without an end?

  T. H. White

  Consciousness, Reason, Ends

  T.H. White (2012). “The Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once and Future King”, p.64, University of Texas Press

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• But we have reason to think that the annihilation of work is no less a physical impossibility than its creation, that is, than perpetual motion.

  Sir George Stokes, 1st Baronet

  Hard Work, Thinking, Reason

  6 Copy quote

• My mother use to call me 'Miss Perpetual Motion' because I rarely keep still.

  Joan Collins

  Mother, Missing, Use

  6 Copy quote