The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.

Unlike T.V., we cannot have too much of science, despite its nuclear quirks. With science, ideas can germinate within a bed of theory, form, and practice that assists their growth ... but we, as gardeners, must beware, for some seeds are the seeds of ruin, and the most iridescent blooms are often the most dangerous.

Science, great, mighty and in the end unerring, science has fallen into many errors - errors which have been fortunate and useful rather than otherwise, for they have been the steppingstones to truth.

We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events.

The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.

I don't think science is hard to teach because humans aren't ready for it, or because it arose only through a fluke, or because, by and large, we don't have the brainpower to grapple with it. Instead, the enormous zest for science that I see in first-graders and the lesson from the remnant hunter-gatherers both speak eloquently: A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchising them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.

I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools. My main concern is that an over-emphasis on testing and league tables has led to a lack of time and freedom for a true, imaginative and humane engagement with literature.

The most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what’s going on in front of me.

In these days, when there is a tendency to specialize so closely, it is well for us to be reminded that the possibilities of being at once broad and deep did not pass with Leonardo Da Vinci or even Benjamin Franklin. Men of our profession - we teachers - are bound to be impressed by the tendency of youths of strikingly capable minds to become interested in one small corner of science and uninterested in the rest of the world ... It is unfortunate when a brilliant and creative mind insists upon living in a modern monastic cell.

If science ceases to be a rebellion against authority, then it does not deserve the talents of our brightest children.

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.

In other words, science is a method that chiefly expands our ignorance rather than our knowledge.

One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have.

Misunderstanding of probability may be the greatest of all general impediments to scientific literacy.