...not everyone is willing to defend a position of 'not knowing.' There is no virtue in ignorance for its own sake.

The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world.

No theory changes what it is a theory about. Nothing is changed because we look at it, talk about it, or analyze it in a new way. Keats drank confusion to Newton for analyzing the rainbow, but the rainbow remained as beautiful as ever and became for many even more beautiful. Man has not changed because we look at him, talk about him, and analyze him scientifically. ... What does change is our chance of doing something about the subject of a theory. Newton's analysis of the light in a rainbow was a step in the direction of the laser.

A first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: when you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.

I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is.

In the world at large we seldom vote for a principle or a given state of affairs. We vote for a man who pretends to believe in that principle or promises to achieve that state. We don't want a man, we want a condition of peace and plenty-- or, it may be, war and want-- but we must vote for a man.

The world's a poor standard. any society which is free of hunger and violence looks bright against that background.