Science can lift people out of poverty and cure disease. That, in turn, will reduce civil unrest.

When both a speaker and an audience are confused, the speech is profound.

How do I work? I grope.

In scientific work, those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact.

I believe that in every person is a kind of circuit which resonates to intellectual discovery-and the idea is to make that resonance work

I suppose in about fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.

Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away.

Describe us as a sex, was her challenge. Sphinxes without secrets.

In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public.  Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.

I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question—simply curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who propose to us, and not we who propose to the women. Except, of course, in middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not modern.

Alexander Pope: Men must be taught as if you taught them not And things unknown proposed as things forgot. Over three hundred years ago Galileo said: You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself.

Genius, it is said, is the ability to scrutinize the obvious.