It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works.
It is a mistake to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not encourage cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines.
It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading.
If you’re born in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and work in a cell, and vacation in a crowded sun-room, then coming up into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown.
If you ask for too much, you lose even that which you have.
If we only obey those rules that we think are just and reasonable, then no rule will stand, for there is no rule that some will not think is unjust and unreasonable.
If knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance.
If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over.
I never considered myself a patriot. I like to think I recognize only humanity as my nation.
I fear my ignorance.
I don’t expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.
