Died on June 16 — Quotes

The purity of the critical ermine, like that of the judicial, is often soiled by contact with politics.

I believe it is time for the Government urgently to consider deterring the indiscriminate aerial bombardment of civilians in Syria through the willingness to consider the prudent and limited use of force.

Thenceforth they thought that, rationally concluded, doubt could become an instrument of knowledge.

There has always been in the Society of Friends a group of persons pledged unswervingly to the ideal. To those who form this inner group compromise is under no circumstance allowable. If there comes a collision between allegiance to the ideal and the holding of public office, then the office must be deserted. If obedience to the soul's vision involves eye or hand, houses or lands or life, they must be immediately surrendered. But there has always been as well another group who have held it to be equally imperative to work out their principles of life in the complex affairs of the community and the state, where to gain an end one must yield something; where to get on one must submit to existing conditions; and where to achieve ultimate triumph one must risk his ideals to the tender mercies of a world not yet ripe for them.

My experiences with science led me to God. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun?

Translation: Revenue and cost have to be in the right relation to each other.

I often liken the process of physics research to solving a jigsaw puzzle. As we put together pieces to form patches, a certain image of the overall picture emerges, but until the game is sufficiently progressed, we are not quite sure. I feel much the same way about the wealth of signs for new particles. We have patches that have been put together, but we are not quite sure how all pieces will fit together into a coherent whole. There are also certain pieces which do not seem to fit into any patches at all. For the most part, the experimental findings have not been completely unexpected, but there have been certain surprises that I, for one, had not foreseen. This is what makes particle physics exciting and tantalizing. At moments of despair and frustration, I feel as though somebody has scrambled two boxes of jigsaw puzzles for me to put together.

Heroism is no extempore work of transient impulse,—a rocket rushing fretfully up to disturb the darkness by which, after a moment's insulting radiance, it is ruthlessly swallowed up,—but a steady fire, which darts forth tongues of flame.

Talent jogs to conclusions to which Genius takes giant leaps.

Courage, brother! do not stumble, Though thy path be dark as night;
There’s a star to guide the humble, Trust in God and do the Right.

Perhaps the rarest bit of irony in American history is the later custodianship of democracy by the middle class, who while perfecting their tariffs and subsidies, legislating from the bench, exploiting the state and outlawing all political theories but their own, denounce all class consciousness as unpatriotic and all agrarian or proletarian programs as undemocratic. But it was no fault of Andrew Jackson if the final outcome of the great movement of Jacksonian democracy was so untoward; it was rather the fault of the times that were not ripe for democracy. ... One far-reaching result survived the movement, the popularization of the name of democracy and the naive acceptance of the belief that the genius of America was democratic.

I never really grew up being political or Labour. It kind of came at Cambridge where it was just a realisation that where you were born mattered. That how you spoke mattered... who you knew mattered. I didn’t really speak right or knew the right people. I spent the summers packing toothpaste at a factory working where my dad worked and everyone else had gone on a gap year! To be honest my experience at Cambridge really knocked me for about five years.

Those who live on vanity must not unreasonably expect to die of mortification.

It is in scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance.

Yorkshire folk are not fools.