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1 " Students of the heavens are separable into astronomers and astrologers as readily as are the minor domestic ruminants into sheep and goats, but the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks seems to be more sensitive to frames of reference. "
― Willard Van Orman Quine
2 " Nothing is a masterpiece - a real masterpiece - till it's about two hundred years old. A picture is like a tree or a church, you've got to let it grow into a masterpiece. Same with a poem or a new religion. They begin as a lot of funny words. Nobody knows whether they're all nonsense or a gift from heaven. And the only people who think anything of 'em are a lot of cranks or crackpots, or poor devils who don't know enough to know anything. Look at Christianity. Just a lot of floating seeds to start with, all sorts of seeds. It was a long time before one of them grew into a tree big enough to kill the rest and keep the rain off. And it's only when the tree has been cut into planks and built into a house and the house has got pretty old and about fifty generations of ordinary lumpheads who don't know a work of art from a public convenience, have been knocking nails in the kitchen beams to hang hams on, and screwing hooks in the walls for whips and guns and photographs and calendars and measuring the children on the window frames and chopping out a new cupboard under the stairs to keep the cheese and murdering their wives in the back room and burying them under the cellar flags, that it begins even to feel like a religion. And when the whole place is full of dry rot and ghosts and old bones and the shelves are breaking down with old wormy books that no one could read if they tried, and the attic floors are bulging through the servants' ceilings with old trunks and top-boots and gasoliers and dressmaker's dummies and ball frocks and dolls-houses and pony saddles and blunderbusses and parrot cages and uniforms and love letters and jugs without handles and bridal pots decorated with forget-me-nots and a piece out at the bottom, that it grows into a real old faith, a masterpiece which people can really get something out of, each for himself. And then, of course, everybody keeps on saying that it ought to be pulled down at once, because it's an insanitary nuisance. "
― Joyce Cary , The Horse's Mouth
3 " Where misunderstanding dwells, misuse will not be far behind. No theory in the history of science has been more misused and abused by cranks and charlatans—and misunderstood by people struggling in good faith with difficult ideas—than quantum mechanics. "
― Sean Carroll , The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
4 " Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.... The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see; like bringing a horse back and back to the fence it has refused to jump or bringing a child back and back to the bit in its lesson that it wants to shirk. "
― C.S. Lewis , Mere Christianity
5 " Yesterday I was talking to a friend, and she mentioned there was a difference in me. She asked if I was happy, and commented that she noticed I seemed less excited about life. When I probed deeper, she commented I used to be excited about writing, my play, etc. Not that I needed to explain, but I felt she needed to hear this:" I am not one of those writers who cranks out book after book. Yes, when I was writing my first book and when I was working on my play, I was all in. It felt like a calling. I was driven to do it...but I'm so much more than a writer. I'm in a new phase of my life. I'm exploring other interests. My focus is different-no less exciting-but different all the same. I'm comfortable with that, and I need you to be comfortable with it, too. I'm contented. I like that word better than happy. I'm always up to something. Don't be distracted by my seriousness. That usually means I'm thinking. If something were wrong, I have no trouble reaching out for help. I'm keenly in touch with myself." I say this to say, folk will measure you by a past accomplishment (or failure in some cases) and forever hold you to that standard. It's okay to change your path...to follow your dreams...to allow room for another passion. You don't need anyone's permission. "
6 " Thomas remembered the image of the Cranks at the windows back at the dorm. Like living nightmares, missing only a death certificate to make them official zombies. "
― James Dashner , The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2)
7 " He put his ear to his own chest and listened to the heart. How could the pulse go on, beat after beat, for all of life? No machine could run that long without a stumble. Ask not if the beating cranks are going to jam, but when. "