In this model, the sun is a very tiny speck of dust indeed-a speck less than a three-thousandth of an inch in diameter ... Think of the sun as something less than a speck of dust in a vast city, of the earth as less than a millionth part of such a speck of dust, and we have perhaps as vivid a picture as the mind can really grasp of the relation of our home in space to the rest of the universe.

The human race, whose intelligence dates back only a single tick of the astronomical clock, could hardly hope to understand so soon what it all means.

All discussion of the ultimate nature of things must necessarily be barren unless we have some extraneous standards against which to compare them.

We may as well cut out group theory. That is a subject that will never be of any use in physics.

Science should leave off making pronouncements: the river of knowledge has too often turned back on itself.

Humanity is at the very beginning of its existence-a new-born babe, with all the unexplored potentialities of babyhood; and until the last few moments its interest has been centred, absolutely and exclusively, on its cradle and feeding bottle.

Kant, discussing the various modes of perception by which the human mind apprehends nature, concluded that it is specially prone to see nature through mathematical spectacles. Just as a man wearing blue spectacles would see only a blue world, so Kant thought that, with our mental bias, we tend to see only a mathematical world.