To me the most interesting thing about man is that he is an animal who practices art and science and in every known society practices both together.

Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding

The progress of science is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had seemed unlike.

There are three creative ideas which, each in its turn, have been central to science. They are the idea of order, the idea of causes, and the idea of chance.

This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave.

To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.

We are all afraid for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do.