The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

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. You see it in his science. You see it in the magnificence with which he carves and builds, the loving care, the gaiety, the effrontery. The monuments are supposed to commemorate kings and religions, heroes, dogmas, but in the end the man they commemorate is the builder.

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power. ... The time has come to consider how we might bring about a separation, as complete as possible, between Science and Government in all countries. I call this the disestablishment of science, in the same sense in which the churches have been disestablished and have become independent of the state.

There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy.

The largest single step in the ascent of man is the change from nomad to village agriculture.

The basis for poetry and scientific discovery is the ability to comprehend the unlike in the like and the like in the unlike.

The preoccupation with the choice of a mate both by male and female I regard as a continuing echo of the major selective force by which we have evolved.