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CelticWarlord
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Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow , 1905 – 1980, was an English novelist and physical chemist who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the UK government. He is best known for his series of novels known collectively as Strangers and Brothers , and for The Two Cultures , a 1959 lecture in which he laments the gulf between scientists and “literary intellectuals”.
“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.”
“The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you’ll never find it.”
“I want a man who knows something about himself. And is appalled. And has to forgive himself to get along.”
“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?”
Upon hearing the Periodic Table explained in a first-term university lecture - “For the first time I saw a medley of haphazard facts fall into line and order. All the jumbles and recipes and hotchpotch of the inorganic chemistry of my boyhood seemed to fit into the scheme before my eyes—as though one were standing beside a jungle and it suddenly transformed itself into a Dutch garden."
“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.
“The more certain men are that they are chasing their own concrete and ‘realistic’ ends, so it often seemed to me, the more nakedly do you see all the strands they could never give a reason for.”
Code:
- - - - - - -“The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you’ll never find it.”
“I want a man who knows something about himself. And is appalled. And has to forgive himself to get along.”
“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?”
Upon hearing the Periodic Table explained in a first-term university lecture - “For the first time I saw a medley of haphazard facts fall into line and order. All the jumbles and recipes and hotchpotch of the inorganic chemistry of my boyhood seemed to fit into the scheme before my eyes—as though one were standing beside a jungle and it suddenly transformed itself into a Dutch garden."
“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.
“The more certain men are that they are chasing their own concrete and ‘realistic’ ends, so it often seemed to me, the more nakedly do you see all the strands they could never give a reason for.”
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