A Genius Is A Man Who Has

That Series Of Inventions By Which Man From Age To Age Has Remade His Environment Is A Different Kind Of Evolution -- Not Biological, But Cultural Evolution . . . "the Ascent Of Man.

One Original Thought Is Worth The Sum Total Of Human Knowledge, Because It Advances The Sum Total Of Human Knowledge By That One Original Thought.

Da Vinci Was As Great A Mechanic And Inventor As Were Newton And His Friends. Yet A Glance At His Notebooks Shows Us That What Fascinated Him About Nature Was Its Variety, Its Infinite Adaptability, The Fitness And The Individuality Of All Its Parts. By Contrast What Made Astronomy A Pleasure To Newton Was Its Unity, Its Singleness, Its Model Of A Nature In Which The Diversified Parts Were Mere Disguises For The Same Blank Atoms.

By The Worldly Standards Of Public Life, All Scholars In Their Work Are Of Course Oddly Virtuous. They Do Not Make Wild Claims, They Do Not Cheat, They Do Not Try To Persuade At Any Cost, They Appeal Neither To Prejudice Nor To Authority . . .

[john] Dalton Was A Man Of Regular Habits. For Fifty-seven Years He Walked Out Of Manchester Every Day; He Measured The Rainfall, The Temperature-a Singularly Monotonous Enterprise In This Climate. Of All That Mass Of Data, Nothing Whatever Came. But Of The One Searching, Almost Childlike Question About The Weights That Enter The Construction Of These Simple Molecules-out Of That Came Modern Atomic Theory. That Is The Essence Of Science: Ask An Impertinent Question, And You Are On The Way To The Pertinent Answer.