The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole through which the pervert climbs into the minds of ordinary men.
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By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, they do not cheat, they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice nor to authority, they are often frank about their ignorance, their disputes are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being argued with race, politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to the young and to the old who both know everything. These are the general virtues of scholarship, and they are peculiarly the virtues of science.
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Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.
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The values by which we are to survive are not rules for just and unjust conduct, but are those deeper illuminations in whose light justice and injustice, good and evil, means and ends are seen in fearful sharpness of outline.
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Astronomy is not the apex of science or of invention. But it is a test of the cast of temperament and mind that underlies a culture.
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Who has not hoped To outrage an enemy's dignity? Who has not been swept By the wish to hurt? And who has not thought that the impersonal world Deserves no better than to be destroyed By one fabulous sign of his displeasure?
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Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
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The world is full of people who never quite get into the first team and who just miss the prizes at the flower show.
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Man is unique not because he does science, and he is unique not because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind.
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The most wonderful discovery made by scientists is science itself.
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