The right to take a chance, the right to suffer. The right to be unwise, the right to die. These aims are hateful to the government, which values ever frightened mouse and falling sparrow as equal to a tiger burning bright.

A scientist ought to have a healthy disregard for coincidences.

The result is ... that there's no room left in the world for the weird – though plenty for crude, contemptuous, wisecracking, fun-poking imitations of it.

Better freedom and a chilly road than a warm hearth and servitude.

What is superstition , but misguided, unobjective science? And when it comes down to that, is it to be wondered if people grasp at superstition in this rotten, hate-filled, half-doomed world of today? Lord knows, I'd welcome the blackest of black magic, if it could do anything to stave off the atom bomb.

There was an omnipresent sense of crisis.

Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy , looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find.