“Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems .”

We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words.

The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based.

A person who wasn’t outraged on first hearing about quantum theory didn’t understand what had been said.

The measurement we get when we measure something is not a property of the thing measured.

If you think you understand it, that only shows that you don’t know the first thing about it.

I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.

In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience.

If you have a correct statement, then the opposite of a correct statement is of course an incorrect statement, a wrong statement. But when you have a deep truth, then the opposite of a deep truth may again be a deep truth.

What is that we human beings ultimately depend on? We depend on our words. We are suspended in language. Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others.

The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

It is a great pity that human beings cannot find all of their satisfaction in scientific contemplativeness.

There are two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are clearly absurd, and profound truths, recognised by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth.

If an idea does not appear bizarre, there is no hope for it.

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.

Address to Albert Einstein: You are not thinking. You are merely being logical.

Metaphysics of Evolution: What is Matter & Life? ‘Recent discoveries from Russia confirm that DNA / Genes are resonant structures which are subtly interconnected to their environment. i.e. Genetic material can be manipulated by waves with certain resonant frequencies.’

As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way.

I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material.

It was this appetite for beer-making material that led to crop cultivation, permanent settlement and agriculture.

I always knew that I wanted to work on my own material – something that would be more long-lasting than short-lived electronic transmissions.

That’s what we’re all doing, all the time, whether we know it or not. Whether we like it or not. Creating something on the spur of the moment with the materials at hand.

Soloing is the most beautiful way of climbing; no material constrains, just you and the rock, the sun, nature; a kind of school for courage, willpower and self-confidence.

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.