Jacob Bronowski Quotes

Science is a field which grows continuously with ever expanding frontiers.

What's interesting about science is that we're constantly discovering new things about the universe, about ourselves, about our bodies, about diseases, about the possibilities of the future. It's amazing. Science is one of the coolest things about being a human being - without a doubt.

I'm very pro-science and pro-technology; I believe that these have been key drivers of progress in the world in the last centuries.

Curiosity - the rover and the concept - is what science is all about: the quest to reveal the unknown.

Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective.

There cannot be any impediment to science that will ultimately be good to the general public.

One can not impede scientific progress.

Science has fulfilled her function when she has ascertained and enunciated truth.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

I'm really convinced that our descendants a century or two from now will look back at us with the same pity that we have toward the people in the field of science two centuries ago.

modern civilization and the progress of science have greatly improved man's life and have brought comfort and ease in their trail. But civilization can serve man both for good as well as for evil purposes. Experience shows that it has invariably brought great dividends to those who use it for good purposes while it has always brought incalculable harm and damnation to those who use it for evil purposes

Why do you do science? In this particular case, we don't have a very good reason to be doing this except for the knowledge that it brings. This research is especially important to young people. We all want to know what's going on in the universe.

Without science, there would be no such hope.

Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely. Only with the discovery of the double helix and the ensuing genetic revolution have we had grounds for thinking that the powers held traditionally to be the exclusive property of the gods might one day be ours. 5

Science is the most intimate school of resignation and humility, for it teaches us to bow before the seemingly most insignificant of facts.

At every stage of understanding the universe better, the benefits to civilisation have been immeasurable. None of those big leaps were made with us knowing what was going to happen.

We re-make nature by the act of discovery, in the poem or in the theorem. And the great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader, and yet are his own experiences, because he himself re-creates them. They are the marks of unity in variety; and in the instant when the mind seizes this for itself, in art or in science, the heart misses a beat.

The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.

Alas! Your dear friend and servant Galileo has been for the last month hopelessly blind; so that this heaven, this earth, this universe, which I by my marvelous discoveries and clear demonstrations had enlarged a hundred thousand times beyond the belief of the wise men of bygone ages, henceforward for me is shrunk into such a small space as is filled by my own bodily sensations.

To use Newton's words, our efforts up till this moment have but turned over a pebble or shell here and there on the beach, with only a forlorn hope that under one of them was the gem we were seeking. Now we have the sieve, the minds, the hands, the time, and, particularly, the dedication to find those gems-no matter in which favorite hiding place the children of distant worlds have placed them.

Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists.

What's so exciting and terrifying about the writing process is that it really is an act of exploration and discovery. With all of us, not just writers, there is a sort of knowledge of the other. We have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think writing is really a sustained act of empathy.

Our modern lifestyle is not a political creation. Before 1700, everybody was poor as hell. Life was short and brutish. It wasn't because we didn't have good politicians; we had some really good politicians. But then we started inventing - electricity, steam engines, microprocessors, understanding genetics and medicine and things like that. Yes, stability and education are important - I'm not taking anything away from that - but innovation is the real driver of progress.

That's the beautiful thing about science - that it's all about things we don't understand, not just the things we do understand.