Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.

Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.

Touch a scientist and you touch a child.

Touch a scientist and you touch a child.

Man's fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness.

Man's fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness.

If unix is the face of the future I wanna go back to quill pens.

If unix is the face of the future I wanna go back to quill pens.

Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.

Ours is the age which is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.

Thinking is the hardest work there is. Which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.

Thinking is the hardest work there is. Which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.

...there is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. read more

...there is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. But the difference is that once you've made the intuitive leap you have to justify it by filling in the intermediate steps. In my case, it often happens that I have an idea, but then I try to fill in the intermediate steps and find that they don't work, so I have to give it up.

Like the furtive collectors of stolen art, we [cell biologists] are forced to be lonely admirers of spectacular architecture, exquisite read more

Like the furtive collectors of stolen art, we [cell biologists] are forced to be lonely admirers of spectacular architecture, exquisite symmetry, dramas of violence and death, mobility, self-sacrifice and, yes, rococo sex.

Science is simply common sense at its best--that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

Science is simply common sense at its best--that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.