Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
Worse than any severe mental illness, is the illness of bigotry.
The cooperative structure never encourages huge bureaucratic systems, for it knows that mammoth bureaucracies cannot be sensitive to the needs of people.
It is no small art to sleep: for that purpose you must keep awake all day.
I am the master of my failure… If I never fail how will I ever learn.
That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.
I mean, you could claim that anything’s real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody’s proved it doesn’t exist!
Writing my own novels in the ’90s…I never imagined that in ten years, science and rationality would require explanation and defense in a world rocked and ruled by religious fervor.
Every cause produces more than one effect.