A Quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We are pantheists as natural scientists, polytheists as poets, and monotheists as moral beings.
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We are pantheists when we study nature, polytheists when we write poetry, monotheists in our morality.
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.
Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men havethe same moral nature, they have essentially the same rights. These rights may be wrested from the slave, but they cannot be alienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as is that of Lyman Beecher: it is stamped on his moral being, and is, like it, imperishable.
The mental secularization of Christians means that nowadays we meet only as worshipping beings and as moral beings, not as thinking beings.
The poets are wrong of course […] But then poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple and natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.
Scientists are scientists. They're not really in a position to speak clearly on the moral dimensions, and they're not really comfortable doing that.
Morality is neither rational nor absolute nor natural. World has known many moral systems, each of which advances claims universality; all moral systems are therefore particular, serving a specific purpose for their propagators or creators, and enforcing a certain regime that disciplines human beings for social life by narrowing our perspectives and limiting our horizons.
People often think of artists and scientists as being diametrically opposed, but we both believe something is possible. We have a hypothesis and then we do everything to make it possible, but we don't know if it's possible! All the scientists I've worked with have a natural, easy fit with me. The solutions they find are truly creative. All scientists, in some way, are artists.
Beyond the Einsteins and Darwins, most scientists don't have chroniclers. Einstein and Darwin were geniuses - that helps. Many scientists do amazing stuff, but it just disappears into footnotes and dusty medical journals. If I were masochistic enough, I could spend the rest of my life rescuing scientists. Most of them aren't natural self-promoters.
In reading, we are both scientists and poets.
As a scientist, of course, we have to believe there is no supernatural. There are only natural entities in the universe. And those are the things that we study as natural scientists.
Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men have the same moral nature, they have the same rights.
We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense.
The poets think about war more than the social scientists.
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
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