John Fowles Quotes

Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that's been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings.

What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.

The traditional Christian attitude toward human personality was that human nature was essentially good and that it was formed and modified by social pressures and training.

One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics.

Little white lies are part of everyday life. If you're in court being charged with a felony, you're probably going to be tempted to lie. Or if your girlfriend asks you if the sweater she is wearing makes her look fat; you're going to lie because you love that person. There are different reasons and justifications to lie; it's human nature.

Natural science, does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves.

I think the attraction of 'American Idol' is about the basic human nature attitude that is, 'We can put you up there. But we can take you down.'

I find the attempt to find things out, which scientists are possessed by, to be as human as breathing, or feeding, or sex. And so the science has to be in the novels as science and not just as metaphors.

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

But little white lies here and there is human nature. Everybody does that.

... anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also.

Our perceptions are limited. Our brains distort the truth. So do we ever know what is real? That is the mission of science. To probe deep into the massive puzzle box of nature to find its ultimate truths.

Politicians aren't special. They lie the same way we all do, revealing their true nature under pressure.

The scientific study of Nature tends not only to correct and ennoble the intellectual conceptions of man; it serves also to ameliorate his physical condition.

So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.

We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange foot-print on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the foot-print. And Lo! it is our own.

The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one's eyes.

There is none so blind as he who will not see. We must not close our minds, we must let our thoughts be free. For every hour that passes by, we know the world gets a little bit older, it's time to realize that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Natural science sharpens the discrimination. There is no false logic in nature. All its properties are permanent: the acids and metals never lie; their yea is yea, their nay, nay. They are newly discovered but not new.

Feynman's cryptic remark, "no one is that much smarter ...," to me, implies something Feynman kept emphasizing: that the key to his achievements was not anything "magical" but the right attitude, the focus on nature's reality, the focus on asking the right questions, the willingness to try (and to discard) unconventional answers, the sensitive ear for phoniness, self-deception, bombast, and conventional but unproven assumptions.

The mysteries of Nature and of humanity are not lessened, but increased, by the discoveries of philosophic skill.

Everybody lies...every day, every hour, awake, asleep, in his dreams, in his joy, in his mourning. If he keeps his tongue still his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude will convey deception.

Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature,--endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity.

...people are by nature fickle, and it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to keep them persuaded.