Dream or nightmare, we have to live our experience as it is, and we have to live it awake. We live in a world which is penetrated through and through by science and which is both whole and real. We cannot turn it into a game simple by taking sides.

The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well. And having done it well, he loves to do it better.

It is often said that the progression from simple to complex runs counter to the normal statistics of chance that are formalized in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Strictly speaking, we could avoid this criticism simply by insisting that the Second Law does not apply to living systems in the environment in which we find them. For the Second Law applies only when there is no overall flow of energy into or out of a system, whereas all living systems are sustained by a net inflow of energy.

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

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible.

The great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader, and yet are his own experiences, because he himself recreates them.

Knowledge is not a loose leaf notebook of facts.