“All our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook.”

“I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good—good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody’s allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn’t be added to except by special permission from the head cook.”

“Specialized meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles, as a kind of hallmark of true science.”

“Deprived of their newspapers or a novel, reading-addicts will fall back onto cookery books, on the literature which is wrapped around bottles of patent medicine, on those instructions for keeping the contents crisp which are printed on the outside of boxes of breakfast cereals. On anything.”

“That was the chief difference between literature and life. In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is high; in reality, very low.”

“Chastity—the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions, he added parenthetically, out of Remy de Gourmont.”

“Even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes even science.”