Peter Medawar Quotes

“How have people come to be taken in by The Phenomenon of Man? We must not underestimate the size of the market for works of this kind [pseudoscience/'woo'], for philosophy-fiction. Just as compulsory primary education created a market catered for by cheap dailies and weeklies, so the spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.”

“The alternative to thinking in evolutionary terms is not to think at all.”

“The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.”

“The existence of a limit to science is, however, made clear by its inability to answer childlike elementary questions having to do with first and last things – questions such as “How did everything begin?” “What are we all here for?” “What is the point of living?”

“That there is indeed a limit upon science is made very likely by the existence of questions that science cannot answer and that no conceivable advance of science would empower it to answer… It is not to science, therefore but to metaphysics, imaginative literature or religion that we must turn for answers to questions having to do with first and last things.”

“For a scientist must indeed be freely imaginative and yet skeptical, creative and yet a critic. There is a sense in which he must be free, but another in which his thought must be very precisely regimented; there is poetry in science, but also a lot of bookkeeping.”

“The computer may be incompetent in itself--that is, unable to do the work for which it was designed. This kind of incompetence can never be eliminated, because the Peter Principle applies in the plants where computers are designed and manufactured.”

“For long the two enemies looked at one another, Hook shuddering slightly, and Peter with the strange smile upon his face."So, Pan," said Hook at last, "this is all your doing.""Ay, James Hook," came the stern answer, "it is all my doing.""Proud and insolent youth," said Hook, "prepare to meet thy doom.""Dark and sinister man,“For long the two enemies looked at one another, Hook shuddering slightly, and Peter with the strange smile upon his face."Dark and sinister man," Peter answered, "have at thee.”

“I can't come,' she said apologetically, 'I have forgotten how to fly.''I'll soon teach you again.''O Peter, don't waste the fairy dust on me.”

“Peter," she began. He looked up at her, and she could see the pain in his eyes. "I love you," she said freely. With Peter, she was laid bare; he extracted her from herself.Peter didn't know what to say. HIs eyes glimmered, bright and burning. He only let her see them a moment before he turned away. He took a ragged breath."What were you doing with Rose anyway" she demanded, asking a lot of him.Peter darkened again. He turned his back to her, took a step farther into the alley, and said in a dead voice, "I don't have to like herto get what I want.""I don't believe you," Valerie said, reaching for his face, again. Peter pulled away from her. "You're lying.”