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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses.

Certainty ends inquiry.

Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding

Dissent is the mark of freedom.

There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy.

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.

Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.