“The worst thing a son-of-a-bitch can do is turn you into a son-of-a-bitch.”
“Artists and Scientists are the official ‘noticers’ of society; they notice things that other people either have never learned to see or have learned to ignore, and communicate those ‘noticings’ to others.”
“There’s a lot of practical fruits to understanding, but it’s like sex. There are practical fruits to sex, but nobody would say that’s why you do it, normally.”
“Perhaps some wonderful new social invention would appear if only we had an inkling of why it is that people enjoy listening to music.”
“Excessive coercion inevitably breeds disasters, not because it is so cruel, but…because it negates the essential value of understanding that is gained through art and science.”
“I believe that large sections of this so-called inattentive public would come to life in a situation in which they didn’t feel they were being fooled and lied to all the time.”
“I see no reason for a museum to cater to the fact that many people have been put off language by the way it is so deliberately used with dishonesty in commercial and political life.”
“How does one evaluate the educational outcomes of play?”
“How does one determine the social benefits of sightseeing?”
“Why do we insist that there must always be a measure for the quality of learning? By thus insisting, we have limited our teaching to only those aspects of learning for which we have devised a ready measure.”
“What a strange misconception has been taught to people. They have been taught that one cannot be disciplined enough to discover the truth unless one is indifferent to it. Actually, there is no point in looking for truth unless what it is makes a difference.”
“Art is not valid merely to decorate our surroundings with statues in the plazas of skyscrapers, any more than science is valid because it provides the conveniences of electric shavers.”
“It is through familiarity with the arts that I think we will make the kinds of changes that will make life stay human.”
“There are two things that people [are surrounded by and] avoid trying to understand. One is music, and the other is electricity.”
“No one flunks a museum.”
“Students don’t fail school; schools fail students.”
“The Manhattan project had a political motivation as well as a technical one. And so does the Exploratorium.”
“The basis for social change as well as technical change is understanding how nature behaves and how people behave, and if one can promote that, if we can create confidence in that, then there’s some chance that we won’t blow each other up and that we can have a decent society.”
“I think that part of the sense of having lived a rich life comes from an ability to continually take things seriously—but not too personally.”
“It’s not the real world; it’s a world we made up.”
“If cows are innately curious, how is it we have managed so thoroughly to suppress curiosity in ourselves and our children?”
“If we stop trying to understand things, we’ll all be sunk.”
“I recommend that you be willing to become deeply involved in lots and lots of things and that you let yourself, perhaps even force yourself, to do things that you think are important and that you can take seriously.
I make this recommendation to you because I believe that if you do, then even in the face of considerable adversity you will feel, as I do now, grateful for having lived.”
