1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Jacob Bronowski

Jacob Bronowski Quotes
page 2

Jacob Bronowski was a British mathematician, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor. He was also the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man, and the accompanying book.

✵ 18. January 1908 – 22. August 1974
Jacob Bronowski photo
Jacob Bronowski: 79 quotes3 likes

Jacob Bronowski Quotes

“When a child… discovers his own imagination, he suddenly walks into a new life. …seeing situations that do not exist. …in part as fantasy, and in part as a quite rational exploration of future experiences. …play …frolics in the fantasy world, and it experiments in the rational world… They project themselves into all worlds, possible and impossible, and discover for themselves the knife-edge boundary between them.”

Jacob Bronowski

"The Imaginative Mind in Art" (1978)

“Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.”

Jacob Bronowski

Part 3: "The Sense of Human Dignity", §5 (p. 61)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)

“[T]he human reason discovers new relations between things not by deduction, but by that unpredictable blend of speculation and insight… induction, which—like other forms of imagination—cannot be formalized.”

Jacob Bronowski

"The Reach of Imagination" (1967)

“It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.”

Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man

Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"
The Ascent of Man (1973)

“I write… for laymen and scientists, because the reader who is interested in any activity which needs thought and judgement is… a person to whom science can be made to speak, It is not he who is deaf, but the specialists who have been dumb—the specialists in the arts as well as in the sciences.”

Jacob Bronowski

"Sense and Sensibility"
The Common Sense of Science (1951)

“All great scientists have used their imaginations freely, and let it ride them to outrageous conclusions without crying "Halt!"”

Jacob Bronowski

"The Reach of Imagination" (1967)

“To imagine means to make images and to move them about inside one's head in new arrangements.”

Jacob Bronowski

"The Reach of Imagination" (1967)

“Not here to worship what is known, but to question it.”

Jacob Bronowski