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.

You will die but the carbon will not; its career does not end with you. It will return to the soil, and there a plant may take it up again in time, sending it once more on a cycle of plant and animal life.

Astronomy is not the apex of science or of invention. But it is a test of the cast of temperament and mind that underlies a culture.

The act of imagination is the opening of the system so that it shows new connections. Every act of act of imagination is the discovery of likenesses between two things which were thought unlike. An example is Newton’s thinking of the likeness between the thrown apple and moon sailing majestically in the sky. Hence, the ‘discovery’ of the laws of gravity.

Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.

We gain our ends only with the laws of nature; we control her only by understanding her laws.

Knowledge is not a loose leaf notebook of facts.