A quote by Howard Hughes

A quote by Lauren Bacall

"Imagination is the highest kite one can fly."

A quote by scientist Nikola Tesla

"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result ... His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way."

A quote from Robin Williams

"There’s no shame in failing. The only shame is not giving things your best shot."

'Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.'

- Pablo Picasso

A quote by Magic Johnson

"Celebrate the life you had, not the life you could've had."

A Quote by Sandra Day O'Connor

"Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time."

'Keep working on a plan. Make no little plans. Make the biggest one you can think of, and spend the rest of your life carrying it out.'

- President Harry Truman (1884-1972)

'I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.'

-Inventor and businessman Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

A quote by Roger Federer

"There is no way around hard work. Embrace it."

'You shouldn't dream your film, you should make it!'

- Filmmaker Steven Spielberg (1946-present)

A quote from Van Gogh

"Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful."

'No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.'

-Author Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

A quote by Herman Melville

"Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence."

'Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch.'

- Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)

'Unfortunately, many people do not consider fun an important item on their daily agenda. For me, that was always a high priority in whatever I was doing.'

-Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier (1923-2020)

'Follow your enthusiasm. It's something I've always believed in. Find those parts of your life you enjoy the most. Do what you enjoy doing.'

- "Muppets" creator Jim Henson (1936-1990)

'I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning ... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.'

- Miles Davis (1926-1991)

Stephen Hawking on the need to explore space

Should we be content with being cosmic couch potatoes? In this interview, the late Professor Stephen Hawking lays out the case for continued and increased human space exploration, despite its cost and challenges.

'May your future be limited only by your dreams.'

- Teacher and astronaut Christa McAuliffe (1948-1986)

Quotes by designer Gianni Versace

"You have to break a barrier every day. Fashion, to me, is born and dies every day."

'And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others.'

-Ralph Ellison, from "Invisible Man" (1913-1994)

'I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.'

- Comedian Joan Rivers (1933-2014)

Langston Hughes poems inspired Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream'

In 1959, King wrote to Hughes, saying, "I can no longer count the number of times and places … in which I have read your poems." Scholars believe that Hughes' words—particularly his poems "Harlem" and "I Dream a World"—inspired King's most famous speech, "I Have a Dream."

JRR Tolkien believed fantasy literature was an entirely different world

Tolkien effectively invented modern fantasy, which often relies on an intricate universe, complete with its own languages, cultures, lifeforms, physics, and systems. When an author did this effectively, he called it “Faërie”—a sort of enchantment that transports the reader into the fictional world.

The origins of Neil Armstrong's moon landing quote is still debated

When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon on July 20, 1969, his first words, transmitted across the globe, became legendary. Decades later, historians still debate whether he meant to say "one small step for a man," and where the phrasing may have originated.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US