The only way of learning the method of science is the long and bitter way of personal experience.

The beauty of life is, therefore, geometrical beauty of a type that Plato would have much appreciated.

In my own field, x-ray crystallography, we used to work out the structure of minerals by various dodges which we never bothered to write down, we just used them. Then Linus Pauling came along to the laboratory, saw what we were doing and wrote out what we now call Pauling's Rules. We had all been using Pauling's Rules for about three or four years before Pauling told us what the rules were.

The present aristocracy of western culture, at the very moment when it most clearly dominates the world, is being imitated rapidly and successfully in every eastern country.

Scientific corporations might well become almost independent states and be enabled to undertake their largest experiments without consulting the outside world - a world which would be less and less able to judge what the experiments were about.

The full area of ignorance is not mapped. We are at present only exploring the fringes.

The very bulk of scientific publications is itself delusive. It is of very unequal value; a large proportion of it, possibly as much as three-quarters, does not deserve to be published at all, and is only published for economic considerations which have nothing to do with the real interests of science.