society

What people say about you behind your back is none of your business.

Nothing is clearer in history than the adoption by successful rebels of the methods they were accustomed to condemn in the forces they deposed.

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

We’re trying to solve culture by engineering.

Science is the only news.

When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science.

Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.

As harmony makes small things grow, discord brings the greatest to ruin.

You would have to have no love whatever for your country, you would have to be hostile to it, to shoot the pride of the nation - its concentrated knowledge, energy and talent! And wasn't it exactly the same...in the case of Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov?

When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots.

"The earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching." 
- Assyrian tablet, c. 2800 BC

For all its cruelties, civilization is precious, an experiment worth continuing. It is also precarious: as we climbed the ladder of progress, we kicked out the rungs below. There is no going back without catastrophe. Those who don’t like civilization, and can’t wait for it to fall on its arrogant face, should keep in mind that there is no other way to support humanity in anything like our present numbers or estate.