Our humanist attitude should therefore throughout be to stress what we all have in common with each other and relegate quarrelsome religion to the private domain where it can do [less] harm.

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

[Newton's calculations] entered the marrow of what we know without knowing how we know it.

Time is that which is manufactured by clocks.

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.

If you walk along the street you will encounter a number of scientific problems. Of these, about 80 per cent are insoluble, while 19½ per cent are trivial. There is then perhaps half a per cent where skill, persistence, courage, creativity and originality can make a difference. It is always the task of the academic to swim in that half a per cent, asking the questions through which some progress can be made.

A theory is scientific only if it can be disproved. But the moment you try to cover absolutely everything the chances are that you cover nothing.