Thou shalt leave valuable contributions for future generations.
- 5th commandment of the Ethical atheist fromhttp://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/ten_commandments.html

If you [are] a real seeker after truth, [you must,] at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.
-Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650)

While getting to Tucson yesterday there was a strange nostalgia. Only 2 months back I had been there as also 3-4 times in the last few years. But this was different. I was going to Tucson to go to Kitt Peak. Tucson was the first place I had been to in the US and that was because I was to observe Sersic-Pastoriza galaxies at a 1-m class telescope. I had encountered many surprises there. Taxi-drivers discussing law; being given the keys to the dome and asked to observe all alone; the variety filled dishes etc. As it happened I was fogged out then.

Hell is full of musical amateurs
-George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

The Nobel winner Shaw was a critic and dramatist (not necessarily in that order) among other things. He was not a musician of note, but he did criticize, or favour, certain musicians in his column. His view of hell would be a good indication of what he treated as good music.

Recognize the fly, even love it if you want, but don't marry it.
-Natalie Goldberg, in Writing down the Bones

Natalie is describing how a writer, in a restaurant scene, can mention a fly, even the particular sandwich it walks over, name its species, but if she digresses too much in discussing the patterns of its wings and a mathematical discussion of its trajectory and such details unconnected to the scene where the reader is expecting the waiter to arrive or something else related to happen, how it can be a put-off.

He was a proud man, with that peculiar pride, not of achievement, not the pride of the well-born or of the rich, but the pride of an ancient race, of the representative of an ancient tradition and system of thought and morality which, actually, had nothing whatever to do with what he really was.
-J Krishnamurti, in The only revolution

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
-Terry Pratchett

Discworld fame Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors. Not all his books are equally funny, but some are amazing with insights and humour thoroughly mixed to great effect. "Truth" is by far one of the best I like.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.
-David Hume (1711-1776)

... tat tvam asi (तत्वमसि ) ...
-Chandogya upanishad, VI.VIII ...

Chandogya Upanishad is also one of the oldest ones and perhaps the best known. It belongs to Saamveda, the veda with metre. It has many very interesting passages in which we learn
- of the knowledge that Kshatriyas had but Brahmins did not,
- of Satyakama's story about how its not your birth that decides if you are a Brahmin,
- of Aruni's statement about the origin of the universe from sat which in the same breath challenges another theory of origin,

... neti, neti ...
-Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, IV.V.15