The difference between ancients and moderns is that the ancients asked what have we experienced, and moderns asked what can we experience.

Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.

Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.

You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.

In England if something goes wrong--say, if one finds a skunk in the garden--he writes to the family solicitor, who proceeds to take the proper measures; whereas in America, you telephone the fire department. Each satisfies a characteristic need; in the English, love of order and legalistic procedure; and here in America, what you like is something vivid, and red, and swift.

The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.

Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.