“As for astronomy, the Greeks did not accept their own or any of the original mythologies with which they came in contact. The refusal to accept mythological explanations for natural phenomena forced the Greeks to disregard the primary evidence of their senses, that is, the evidence of mere appearances. They reasoned their way out of the dead end imposed by the impression that up and down were directional absolutes and therefore the earth was the centre of the universe. By the middle of the fourth century BC (355) the earth and the other visible planets were recognised to be in orbital as well as other movement and the sun the fixed centre of the heavens. A gigantic first step in the direction of the Copernican system had been made. In the cosmology of Philolaos (which is the first recorded pre-Copernican version) there are a number of 'Mack Sennett' aspects, such as the assertion that all forms of life on the moon were fifteen times larger than those on the earth. This was because the author had determined the 'moonday' to be fifteen times as long as our day (that is, half a month).”

“His laws changed all of physics and astronomy. His laws made it possible to calculate the mass of the sun and planets. The way it's done is immensely beautiful. If you know the orbital period of any planet, say, Jupiter or the Earth and you know its distance to the Sun; you can calculate the mass of the Sun. Doesn't this sound like magic?We can carry this one step further - if you know the orbital period of one of Jupiter's bright moons, discovered by Galileo in 1609, and you know the distance between Jupiter and that moon, you can calculate the mass of Jupiter. Therefore, if you know the orbital period of the moon around the Earth (it's 27.32 days), and you know the mean distance between the Earth and the moon (it's about 200,039 miles), then you can calculate to a high degree of accuracy the mass of the Earth. … But Newton's laws reach far beyond our solar system. They dictate and explain the motion of stars, binary stars, star clusters, galaxies and even clusters of galaxies. And Newton's laws deserve credit for the 20th century discovery of what we call dark matter. His laws are beautiful. Breathtakingly simple and incredibly powerful at the same time. They explain so much and the range of phenomena they clarify is mind boggling. By bringing together the physics of motion, of interaction between objects and of planetary movements, Newton brought a new kind of order to astronomical measurements, showing how, what had been a jumble of confused observations made through the centuries were all interconnected.”

“Then came upon a world in ruins an anxious youth. The children were drops of burning blood which had inundated the earth; they were born in the bosom of war, for war. For fifteen years they had dreamed of the snows of Moscow and of the sun of the Pyramids. ”

“I am not very impressed with theological arguments whatever they may be used to support. Such arguments have often been found unsatisfactory in the past. In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, 'And the sun stood still... and hasted not to go down about a whole day' (Joshua x. 13) and 'He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time' (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory.”

“Grigorenko was deprived of his rank, his pension and his Party membership and confined for fifteen months, eight of them in psychushka where he was diagnosed as suffering from 'sluggish schizophrenia', a conceptual concoction of the Soviet psychiatrist Andrei V. Snezhnevsky, who has enlarged the definition of schizophrenia by including the mildest of neuroses. Snezhnevsky's neuroses manifested themselves in such symptoms as social withdrawal, confrontations with authorities, philosophical concerns and the desire to reform society.”

“It had by no means been the first time in her life that a man had finished with her, but it was the first time ever that he'd moved house and left the country to do it.”

“How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth make poetry for a mind that had no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near?”