C P Snow Quotes

#1. Morality existed only in action. It arose out of action: was formed and tested in action: expressed itself in action. That was why we mustn't cheapen it with words

C.P. Snow

#2. I was moving among two groups ... who had almost ceased to communicate at all, who in intellectual, moral, and psychological climate had so little in common that ... one might have crossed the ocean.

C.P. Snow

#3. The most dreadful thing of all is that many millions of people in the poor countries are going to starve to death before our eyes. We shall see them doing so upon our television sets.

C.P. Snow

#4. Technology is a queer thing. It brings you gifts with one hand, and stabs you in the back with the other.

C.P. Snow

#5. I think, on the whole that scientists make slightly better husbands and fathers than most of us, and I admire them for it.

C.P. Snow

#6. Zeroth law: You must play the game
First law: You can't win
Second law: You can't break even
Third law: You can't quit the game.

C.P. Snow

#7. The scientific process has two motives: one is to understand the natural world, the other is to control it.

C.P. Snow

#8. Davy was the type of all the jumped-up second-raters of all time.

C.P. Snow

#9. If you pursue happiness you never find it.

C.P. Snow

#10. It takes a very strong head to keep secrets for years and not go slightly mad. It isn't wise to be advised by anyone slightly mad.

C.P. Snow

#11. This ability to incorporate the past gives the sharpest diagnostic tool, if one asks whether a body of knowledge is a science or not. Do present practitioners have to go back to an original work of the past? Or has it been incorporated? ... Science is cumulative, and embodies its past.

C.P. Snow

#12. I should never have made a good scientist, but I should have made a perfectly adequate one.

C.P. Snow

#13. I want a man who knows something about himself. And is appalled. And has to forgive himself to get along.

C.P. Snow

#14. Try as I might, I could never feel any great affection for a man who so much resembled a Baked Alaska - sweet, warm and gungy on the outside, hard and cold within.

C.P. Snow

#15. No one outside can tell who is right for one. There are no rules. One knows it without help. Sometimes the rest of the world thinks one is wrong, but they cannot know.

C.P. Snow

#16. When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.

C.P. Snow

#17. Since the gap between the rich countries and the poor can be removed, it will be. If we are shortsighted, inept, incapable either of good-will or enlightened self-interest, then it may be removed to the accompaniment of war and starvation: but removed it will be. The questions are, how, and by whom.

C.P. Snow

#18. Two polar groups: at one pole we have the literary intellectuals, at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.

C.P. Snow

#19. By the year 2070 we cannot say, or it would be imbecile to do so, that any man alive could understand Shakespearean experience better than Shakespeare, whereas any decent eighteen-year-old student of physics will know more physics than Newton.

C.P. Snow

#20. I knew well enough how slow the heart is to catch up with the brute facts. One looks forward to a joy: it is snatched away at the last minute: and, hours later, there are darts of illusory delight when one still feels that it is to come. Such moments cheat one and pass sickeningly away. So,

C.P. Snow

#21. Nothing is easier to avoid than publicity. If one genuinely doesn't want it, one doesn't get it.

C.P. Snow

#22. The memory of anyone one had truly loved stayed distinct always and with a special fragrance, quite unaffected by the years. And the memory of one's deepest friendships had a touch of the same magic. But

C.P. Snow

#23. The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.

C.P. Snow

#24. elephantine in their midst, pulled up her

C.P. Snow

#25. Nine English traditions out of ten date from the latter half of the 19th century.

C.P. Snow

#26. What will people of the future think of us? Will they say, as Roger Williams said of some of the Massachusetts Indians, that we were wolves with the minds of men? Will they think that we resigned our humanity? They will have that right.

C.P. Snow

#27. There is, of course, no complete solution. But we can do something. The chief means open to us is education There is no excuse for letting another generation be as vastly ignorant, or as devoid of understanding and sympathy, as we are ourselves.

C.P. Snow

#28. I was searching for something a little more than a dashing metaphor, a good deal less than a cultural map: and for those purposes the two cultures is about right.

C.P. Snow

#29. A scientist has to be neutral in his search for the truth, but he cannot be neutral as to the use of that truth when found. If you know more than other people, you have more responsibility, rather than less.

C.P. Snow

#30. What we need to do is to humanize the scientist and simonize the humanist.

C.P. Snow