There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy.
Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals, so that unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape, he is the shaper of the landscape.
The great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader, and yet are his own experiences, because he himself recreates them.
To me, being an intellectual doesn’t mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.
Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.
Man is unique not because he does science, and his is unique not because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind.
The central opposition between magic and science is the opposition between power and knowledge.
Nature has not fitted man to any specific environment.
A popular cliche in philosophy says that science is pure analysis or reductionism, like taking the rainbow to pieces; and art is pure synthesis, putting the rainbow together. This is not so. All imagination begins by analyzing nature.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about bombs or the intelligence quotients of one race as against another if a man is a scientist, like me, he’ll always say Publish and be damned.
Astronomy is not the apex of science or of invention. But it is a test of the cast of temperament and mind that underlies a culture.
Whether our work is art or science or the daily work of society, it is only the form in which we explore our experience which is different.
Revolutions are not made by fate but by men.
The men who made the Industrial Revolution are usually pictured as hardfaced businessmen with no other motive than self-interest. That is certainly wrong. For one thing, many of them were inventors who had come into business that way.
The paradox of knowledge is not confined to the small, atomic scale; on the contrary, it is as cogent on the scale of man, and even of the stars.
It is very much easier to divide your outlook on the world into two halves, to say that you know this belongs to the daily half and this belongs to the Sunday half.
Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal.
The idea that the universe is running down comes from a simple observation about machines. Every machine consumes more energy than it renders.
Satire is not a social dynamite. But it is a social indicator: it shows that new men are knocking at the door.
The force that makes the winter grow Its feathered hexagons of snow, and drives the bee to match at home Their calculated honeycomb, Is abacus and rose combined. An icy sweetness fills my mind, A sense that under thing and wing Lies, taut yet living, coiled, the spring .