Society evolves not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.

Most things get better by themselves. Most things, in fact, are better by morning.

The central task of science is to arrive, stage by stage, at a clearer comprehension of nature, but this does not at all mean, as it is sometimes claimed to mean, a search for mastery over nature.

For total greed, rapacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility there is nothing to match a nation.

The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance

We still think of human disease as the work of an organized, modernized kind of demonology, in which the bacteria are the most visible and centrally placed of our adversaries. We assume that they must somehow relish what they do.

It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period. The period tells you that that is that; if you didn't get all the meaning you wanted or expected, anyway you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with a semicolon there you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; read on; it will get clearer.