Just as we were misled into untenable ideas of the aether through trusting to an analogy with the material ocean, so we have been misled into untenable ideas of the attributes of the microscopic elements of world-structure through trusting to analogy with gross particles.
The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.
Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.
If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.
An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water.
You cannot disturb the tiniest petal of a flower without the troubling of a distant star.
I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.
It is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.
We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.
The pursuit of truth in science transcends national boundaries. It takes us beyond hatred and anger and fear. It is the best of us.
Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.
The mathematics is not there till we put it there.
Time is the supreme Law of nature.
Who will observe the observers?
Events do not happen; they are just there, and we come across them.
A hundred thousand million Stars make one Galaxy; A hundred thousand million Galaxies make one Universe. The figures may not be very trustworthy, but I think they give a correct impression.
Something unknown is doing we don’t know what-that is what our theory amounts to.
Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.
It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.
Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn’t.