Quote

Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding

Jacob Bronowski

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jacob Bronowski
Age: 66 †
Born: 1908
Born: January 18
Died: 1974
Died: August 22
Biologist
Historian
Humanist
Mathematician
Philosopher
Poet
Television Presenter
Lodz
Masters
Wisdom
Understanding
Force
Nature
Men
Skepticism

More quotes by Jacob Bronowski

Image
All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
A man becomes creative, whether he is an artist or scientist, when he finds a new unity in the variety of nature. He does so by finding a likeness between things which were not thought alike before.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
The men who made the Industrial Revolution are usually pictured as hardfaced businessmen with no other motive than self-interest. That is certainly wrong. For one thing, many of them were inventors who had come into business that way.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
Power is the by-product of understanding.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
Sex was invented as a biological instrument by (say) the green algae. But as an instrument in the ascent of man which is basic to his cultural evolution, it was invented by man himself.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
The great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader, and yet are his own experiences, because he himself recreates them.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
Ask an impertinent question and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
The central opposition between magic and science is the opposition between power and knowledge.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
The air in a man's lungs 10,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000 atoms, so that sooner or later every one of us breathes an atom that has been breathed before by anyone you can think of who has ever lived - Michelangelo or George Washington or Moses.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
The largest single step in the ascent of man is the change from nomad to village agriculture.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
The force that makes the winter grow Its feathered hexagons of snow , and drives the bee to match at home Their calculated honeycomb, Is abacus and rose combined. An icy sweetness fills my mind , A sense that under thing and wing Lies, taut yet living , coiled, the spring .
Jacob Bronowski
Image
I call that brilliant sequence of cultural peaks The Ascent of Man.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
Dream or nightmare, we have to live our experience as it is, and we have to live it awake. We live in a world which is penetrated through and through by science and which is both whole and real. We cannot turn it into a game simple by taking sides.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
Every animal leaves traces of what it was man alone leaves traces of what he created.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
The world today is made, it is powered by science and for any man to abdicate an interest in science is to walk with open eyes towards slavery.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
To me the most interesting thing about man is that he is an animal who practices art and science and in every known society practices both together.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals, so that unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape, he is the shaper of the landscape.
Jacob Bronowski
Image
The world is made up of people who never quite get into the first team and who just miss the prizes at the flower show.
Jacob Bronowski