Science [is] that wonderfully convenient personification of the opinions, at a certain date, of Professors X, Y, and Z....

The more science discovers and the more comprehension it gives us of the mechanisms of existence, the more clearly does the mystery of existence itself stand out.

Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive.

But then the course of events takes no account of verisimilitude. Fiction has to be probable; fact does not.

Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy.

And the two essential and indispensable things are first of all intelligence in the right most sense of that word and goodwill or the old fashion word charity/love, I mean these two things have to go hand in hand. Intelligence and knowledge without charity or goodwill would perhaps be inhuman and goodwill or charity undirected by intelligence or knowledge would be either impotent or misguided, the two have to go together.

The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables.

They had not yet learned to draw the significant but often very fine distinction between smut and pure science.