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Here is the ultimate hope of saving ourselves from extinction. We must learn to understand that the contents of all knowledge is empirical; that its test is whether it works; and we must learn to act on that understanding in the world as well as in the laboratory.

— Jacob Bronowski The Common Sense of Science (1951)

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More quotes by Jacob Bronowski

The symbol and the metaphor are as necessary to science as to poetry.

Science and Human Values (1956)

Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.

Science and Human Values (1956)

Science is nothing else than the search to discover unity in the wild variety of nature — or more exactly, in the variety of our experience.

The God Particle (1993)

We are nature’s unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex.

The Ascent of Man (1973)

In science and in art and in self-knowledge we explore and move constantly by turning to the world of sense to ask, Is this so?

Science and Human Values (1956)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jacob Bronowski (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.