Quote

Civilization is hideously fragile... there's not much between us and the Horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish.

C.P. Snow

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

C.P. Snow
Fragile
Horror
Civilization
Hideously
Much
Varnish
Horrors
Coat
Underneath
Coats

More quotes by C.P. Snow

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Well, we have seen a wonder. We ought to count our blessings.
C.P. Snow
Image
I should never have made a good scientist, but I should have made a perfectly adequate one.
C.P. Snow
Image
Nothing is easier to avoid than publicity. If one genuinely doesn't want it, one doesn't get it.
C.P. Snow
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.
C.P. Snow
Image
The main issue [of the Scientific Revolution] is that the people in the industrialised countries are getting richer, and those in the non-industrialised countries are at best standing still: so the gap between the industrialised countries and the rest is widening every day. On the world scale this is the gap between the rich and the poor.
C.P. Snow
Image
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
Image
Advertising degrades the people it appeals to it deprives them of their will to choose.
C.P. Snow
Image
The scientific process has two motives: one is to understand the natural world, the other is to control it.
C.P. Snow
Image
What will people of the future think of us? Will they say, as Roger Williams said of the Massachusetts Indians, that we were wolves with the minds of men? Will they think that we resigned our humanity? They will have the right.
C.P. Snow
Image
Davy was the type of all the jumped-up second-raters of all time.
C.P. Snow
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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