The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are, of course, in the new places, the places where the rules do not work – not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules.

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

Certainly, if you look at human behavior around the world, you have to admit that we can be very aggressive.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

Ever since Newton, we’ve done science by taking things apart to see how they work. What the computer enables us to do is to put things together to see how they work: we’re now synthesized rather than analysed. I find one of the most enthralling aspects of computers is limitless communication.

The ‚free-floating intellectual‘ may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.

To learn something but not to do is really not to learn. To know something but not to do is really not to know.

To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction than that connected with advances in science.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

I read the book of Job last night, I don’t think God comes out well in it.

Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It’s really counterintuitive.

Is evolution a theory, a system, or an hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

Only the educated are free.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

Proselytism is solemn nonsense; it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

There is no just and serene criticism as yet.

A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man’s insecurity before himself and before nature.

Because atomic behavior is so unlike ordinary experience, it is very difficult to get used to, and it appears peculiar and mysterious to everyone – both to the novice and to the experienced physicist.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

There are two bowlers who I think are very tough to play against – Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel.

The fifth freedom is freedom from ignorance.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

I don’t usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this ‚hopey changey stuff,‘ she was right: there was nothing there.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

Stupidity is a talent for misconception.

It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects.

It is easy enough to define what the Commonwealth is not. Indeed this is quite a popular pastime.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

I’m not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose… it’ll be much harder to detect.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

We as women, we have to understand that we know more, just even instinctively, than we think we do.

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.