I do not believe in the commercial possibility of induced radioactivity.

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

And if we must educate our poets and artists in science, we must educate our masters, labour and capital, in art.

I will give up my belief in evolution if someone finds a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian.

If human beings could be propagated by cutting, like apple trees, aristocracy would be biologically sound.

We do not know, in most cases, how far social failure and success are due to heredity, and how far to environment. But environment is the easier of the two to improve.

My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public.