The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well. And having done it well, he loves to do it better.

The basis for poetry and scientific discovery is the ability to comprehend the unlike in the like and the like in the unlike.

Knowledge is not a loose leaf notebook of facts.

The central opposition between magic and science is the opposition between power and knowledge.

It is not the business of science to inherit the earth, but to inherit the moral imagination; because without that, man and beliefs and science will perish together.

Nations in their great ages have not been great in art or science, but in art and science.

Ask an impertinent question and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.

To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.

The world today is made, it is powered by science; and for any man to abdicate an interest in science is to walk with open eyes towards slavery.

Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.

Every animal leaves traces of what it was; man alone leaves traces of what he created.

We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye ... The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

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

The world is made up of people who never quite get into the first team and who just miss the prizes at the flower show.

Einstein was a man who could ask immensely simple questions. And what his work showed is that when the answers are simple too, then you can hear God thinking.