Jacob Bronowski Quotes

Quotes about:

• Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Errors, Ascent, Judgment

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

  53 Copy quote

• Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Creativity, Adventure, Knowledge

  27 Copy quote

• There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Doors, Tragedy, Scientist

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

  15 Copy quote

• This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Believe, Ignorance, Reality

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

  24 Copy quote

• Certainty ends inquiry.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Learning, Inquiry, Ends

  10 Copy quote

• Ask an impertinent question and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Courage, Science, Asking Questions

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

  80 Copy quote

• No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Power, Political, Politics

  1971 In The Listener.

  82 Copy quote

• The air in a man's lungs 10,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000 atoms, so that sooner or later every one of us breathes an atom that has been breathed before by anyone you can think of who has ever lived - Michelangelo or George Washington or Moses.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Men, Thinking, Air

  "The Common Sense of Science". Book by Jacob Bronowski, 1951.

  26 Copy quote

• No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power. ... The time has come to consider how we might bring about a separation, as complete as possible, between Science and Government in all countries. I call this the disestablishment of science, in the same sense in which the churches have been disestablished and have become independent of the state.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Country, Independent, Science

  16 Copy quote

• It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Inspirational, Education, Teacher

  "'The Ascent of Man' ('Knowledge or Certainty')". Documentary TV Mini-Series, Episode 11, 1973.

  101 Copy quote

• Man is unique not because he does science, and his is unique not because he does art, but because science and art equally are expressions of his marvelous plasticity of mind.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Art, Unique, Men

  61 Copy quote

• Dissent is the mark of freedom.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Liberty, Mark, Dissent

  "Science and Human Values". Book by Jacob Bronowski, 1956.

  19 Copy quote

• Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Acceptance, Thinking, Rejection

  Jacob Bronowski (2011). “The Common Sense of Science”, p.100, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• Knowledge is not a loose-leaf notebook of facts. Above all, it is a responsibility for the integrity of what we are, primarily of what we are as ethical creatures.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Notebook, Integrity, Responsibility

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

  4 Copy quote

• 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, they are often frank about their ignorance, their disputes are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being argued with race, politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to the young and to the old who both know everything. These are the general virtues of scholarship, and they are peculiarly the virtues of science.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Sex, Ignorance, Race

  16 Copy quote

• The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well. And having done it well, he loves to do it better.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Powerful, Men, Skills

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

  7 Copy quote

• Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding

  Jacob Bronowski

  Wisdom, Nature, Men

  Universities Quarterly (1956) vol. 10, no. 3, p. 252

  20 Copy quote

• We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye ... The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Eye, Cutting, Hands

  Ascent of Man (1973) ch. 3

  20 Copy quote

• The world is made up of people who never quite get into the first team and who just miss the prizes at the flower show.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Teamwork, Flower, People

  Face of Violence (1954) ch. 6

  11 Copy quote

• The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Inspirational, Cutting, Hands

  Ascent of Man (1973) ch. 3

  28 Copy quote

• There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts--obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Betrayal, Philosophy, War

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

  7 Copy quote

• Man is not the most majestic of the creatures; long before the mammals even, the dinosaurs were far more splendid. But he has what no other animal possesses: a jigsaw of faculties, which alone, over three thousand million years of life, made him creative. Every animal leaves traces of what he was. Man alone leaves traces of what he created.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Animal, Men, Years

  "'The Ascent of Man' ('Lower than the Angels')". Documentary TV Mini-Series, Episode 1, 1973.

  9 Copy quote

• Einstein was a man who could ask immensely simple questions. And what his work showed is that when the answers are simple too, then you can hear God thinking.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Work, Simple, Men

  9 Copy quote

• Nations in their great ages have not been great in art or science, but in art and science.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Art, Age, Art And Science

  Jacob Bronowski (1978). “The Common Sense of Science”, p.150, Harvard University Press

  9 Copy quote

• It is not the business of science to inherit the earth, but to inherit the moral imagination; because without that, man and beliefs and science will perish together.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Science, Men, Imagination

  4 Copy quote

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