The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on… - Fred Hoyle

Losing power, utterly and completely, is the most dreadful prospect that a politician can think of. It overshadows everything else.

However, there is one respect in which the human species has shown not the slightest originality—its excessive reproductive vigor.

There is an important difference between an advance in science and achievements in the humanities. A great musician consumes intellectual capital, he does not supply it, or at least it is usual for him to consume more than he creates. It has been impossible to use the motto theme of the Fifth Symphony after Beethoven used it. In science, on the other hand, the situation is the other way round. A breakthrough invariably opens up more new problems to be solved. A Newton or an Einstein may leave the world with a century or more of clearing up to be done.