The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.

The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.

Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.

In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles.