The landscape has been so totally changed, the ways of thinking have been so deeply affected, that it is very hard to get hold of what it was like before… It is very hard to realize how total a change in outlook Isaac Newton has produced.

Sometimes I am a little unkind to all my many friends in education ... by saying that from the time it learns to talk every child makes a dreadful nuisance of itself by asking 'Why?'. To stop this nuisance society has invented a marvellous system called education which, for the majority of people, brings to an end their desire to ask that question. The few failures of this system are known as scientists.

Religion divides us, while it is our human characteristics that bind us to each other.

The kind of lecture which I have been so kindly invited to give, and which now appears in book form, gives one a rare opportunity to allow the bees in one's bonnet to buzz even more noisily than usual.

... an opportunity to allow the bees in one's bonnet to buzz even more noisily than usual.

An observer situated in a nebula and moving with the nebula will observe the same properties of the universe as any other similarly situated observer at any time.

The scientist … must always be prepared to deal with the unknown. It is an essential part of science that you should be able to describe matters in a way where you can say something without knowing everything.