A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?

Two polar groups: at one pole we have the literary intellectuals, at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.

It takes a very strong head to keep secrets for years and not go slightly mad. It isn't wise to be advised by anyone slightly mad.

The scientific process has two motives: one is to understand the natural world, the other is to control it.

Nine English traditions out of ten date from the latter half of the nineteenth century.

I should never have made a good scientist, but I should have made a perfectly adequate one.

I think, on the whole that scientists make slightly better husbands and fathers than most of us, and I admire them for it.