Randall Munroe Quotes

I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years.

The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which men shall fly along distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration to be.

I'll be seen as eccentric, like Vic Reeves or Spike Milligan, which would be amazing. But I suppose I'm in this weird transitional period between having some success doing weird stuff and not being eccentric yet. I'm in limbo.

I tend to gravitate toward people who are a bit more eccentric and creative and artistic in some ways. And I like bringing disparate kinds of creative people together to create some great work, even to share points of view on a new direction.

There is something transformative about the act of finding your own way without a to-do list.

My biggest challenge in my career is not looking or sounding like anybody.

I can't be interesting, controversial, and the writer I'd like to be if I need everybody to like me and think I'm doing the right thing, because those two things, in my experience, never go hand in hand.

I did a little bit of flying in high school, but I've just always been inspired and excited about airplanes.

When I did pink, I did it so I wouldn't be dressing like everybody else.

For me, as I was growing up, I studied architecture, I was into music, and I always felt that there was a gap between the things that I loved and consumed and who made them and how they made them.

Everybody always going to sound like somebody. You got to separate yourself.

I've figured out how to turn what's different about me and limitations - I'm new to this world, I'm a woman, I don't have a math background - and how I use that to my advantage. They're what make me unique. In poker you learn very quickly, if you play like everyone else, you'll be fine, but you'll never be great.

I am getting all this fame, but I don't absolutely know what I should rap about.

Creativity requires novelty. Imagination is all about counterfactuals and untested possibilities that don't yet exist.

I'm a bit crazy, so sometimes I just get these mad ideas that, on paper, aren't even possible.

Airplanes are the most beautiful when they are in the air.

The best way to be original is to be yourself.

If you can't find what's unique, people aren't going to listen.

I thought jet planes were just trucks with more wings and less wheels.

When you get past making labels for things, it is possible to combine and transform elements into new things. Look at things until their import, identity, name, use, and description have dissolved.

The best way to get people to think outside the box is not to create the box in the first place.

I talk about airplanes and things like that while my scars are on clear view.

Consolation for those moments when you can't tell whether you're the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.

My airplane is quiet, and for a moment still an alien, still a stranger to the ground, I am home.

I was interested in flying beginning at age 7, when a close family friend took me in his little airplane. And I remember looking at the wheel of the airplane as we rolled down the runway, because I wanted to remember the exact moment that I first went flying... the other thing growing up is that I was always interested in science.