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We are all afraid - for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. The personal commitment of a man to his skill, the intellectual commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man.

— Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man (1973)

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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.