I can't help thinking that science would be more appealing if it had no practical use.

Understanding arises from reducing one type of reality into another.

[Photography] remains servile to a thoughtless vision of the world... As the term snapshot suggests, photography seizes the moment and exhibits it.

Nor must we forget that in science there are no final truths.

The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. If the composer withholds more than we anticipate, we experience a delicious falling sensation; we feel we have been torn from a stable point on the musical ladder and thrust into the void. When the composer withholds less, the opposite occurs: he forces us to perform gymnastic exercises more skillful than our own.

Not all poisonous juices are burning or bitter nor is everything which is burning and bitter poisonous.

The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.