“[Great science and great writing] both involve curiosity, taking risks, thinking in an adventurous manner, and being willing to say something 9/10ths of people will say is wrong.”

“From a certain perspective, the opposition between humanists and scientists seems superficial. Authors like George Eliot and Charles Dickens read or were influenced by Darwin, and Darwin was a great lover of novels. He wrote in his autobiography that novels “have been for years a wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and I often bless all novelists.” As Gell-Mann remarked at lunch one day, “Novels are part of civilization, and thus interesting.” Our era of hyper-specialized subfields and mutually unintelligible vocabularies makes it easy to forget that borders between disciplines were once crossed more frequently.”

“I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today—and even professional scientists—seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.”

“ “I admit, the quantum world is strange, it’s different from anything we experience in the world of baseballs and automobiles. For many people that’s a difficult concept to accept, why should the sub-atomic world behave in such a counter intuitive way, with uncertainties and probabilities, and wave particle dualities?

Well, the role of science is to formulate evermore exact descriptions of the physical world and its events. Some situations, like the orbit of a planet are amenable to exact mathematical descriptions. Other situations, like the flipping of a coin are better described in terms of probability.

The real advantage of science is that it constrains us to describe the world as it IS, not as we wish it to be. So if our everyday metaphors fail in description of the quantum world, perhaps science can enrich our lives with new metaphors.” ”

“Everyone I know who says that going to Mars is a ‘waste of resources’ gives me too high a number for how much they think NASA is getting. I say, ‘How much do you think they’re getting on your tax dollar?’ They say 10 percent, 15 percent. It’s one-half of one penny (per taxpayer). And you’re gonna attack NASA for its one-half of one penny, and say its ‘spending it on the wrong things,’ when NASA is a force of nature unto itself to inspire a generation to wanna become scientifically literate?! And one of the greatest problems this nation has today is the absence of science literacy!”