Jacob Bronowski Quotes

Science gives you an understanding of the physical world, and it increases the capacity for fascination.

An inborn tendency toward science turning it into a lifelong commitment.

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.

Knowing how contented, free, and joyful is life in the world of science, one fervently wishes that many would enter its portals.

Empirical sciences prosecuted purely for their own sake, and without philosophic tendency are like a face without eyes.

I am only a physicist with nothing material to show for my labours. I have never even seen the ionosphere, although I have worked on the subject for thirty years. That does show how lucky people can be. If there had been no ionosphere I would not have been standing here this morning.

A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet.

The question not many ask is: why are the laws of physics like they are?

Nor must we forget that in science there are no final truths.

Belief has no place as far as science reaches, and may be first permitted to take root where science stops.

The real value of science is in the getting, and those who have tasted the pleasure of discovery alone know what science is. A problem solved is dead. A world without problems to be solved would be devoid of science.

In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes.

There is nothing in the universe but matter.

'Science in itself' is nothing, for it exists only in the human beings who are its bearers. 'Science for its own sake' usually means nothing more than science for the sake of the people who happen to be pursuing it.

The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all as things now are with slight endeavour and scanty success.

The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century are themselves the sources of more puzzlement than human beings have ever experienced. Indeed, it is likely that the twentieth century will be looked back at as the time when science provided the first close glimpse of the profundity of human ignorance. We have not reached solutions; we have only begun to discover how to ask questions.

Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world.

There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. (Preface to the French edition).

Scientific work will never stop, and it would be terrible if it did. If there were no more problems, you would put your hands in your pockets and your head on a pillow and would work no more. In science rest is stagnation, rest is death.

It was getting the results that made science worth doing; the accolades were a thin, secondary pleasure.

There is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle

Physics is an attempt conceptually to grasp reality as something that is considered to be independent of its being observed. In this sense one speaks of physical reality.

A scientist lives with all reality. There is nothing better. To know reality is to accept it, and eventually to love it.

While their methods differ radically, artists and physicists share the desire to investigate the ways the interlocking pieces of reality fit together. This is the common ground upon which they meet.

In the American Metaphysical, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetrable, and unpleasant.