
"The Scientific Revolution and the Machine"
The Common Sense of Science (1951)
The Common Sense of Science (1951), on the influence of Isaac Newton.
"The Scientific Revolution and the Machine"
The Common Sense of Science (1951)
As quoted in Self-Motivation Through Risk Taking! : Are You Leading Or Do You Wither with Problems? (2005) by M. Nadarajan Munisamy
New York Times (October 9, 1985)
The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths
Source: Space Chantey (1968), Ch. 6
Context: Something was working in Roadstrum's little ape head. When he had been a man he had always known when it was time for action; particularly he had always known the last moment when action was still possible. He knew now that that moment was come very near. … Then a blinding light burst upon Roadstrum, and he saw the truth of the situation. Many things Roadstrum was not, and it was sometimes wondered why he was the natural leader of all the men. He was their leader because he was a man on whom the blinding light sometimes descended.
“A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.”
Maid in Waiting (1931), Ch. 3
The Expanding Universe (1963)
Context: I heard a famous author say once that the hardest part of writing a book was making yourself sit down at the typewriter. I know what he meant. Unless a writer works constantly to improve and refine the tools of his trade they will be useless instruments if and when the moment of inspiration, of revelation, does come. This is the moment when a writer is spoken through, the moment that a writer must accept with gratitude and humility, and then attempt, as best he can, to communicate to others.
A writer of fantasy, fairly tale, or myth must inevitably discover that he is not writing out of his own knowledge or experience, but out of something both deeper and wider. I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him. I know that this is true of A Wrinkle in Time. I can’t possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice. And it was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant.
Very few children have any problem with the world of the imagination; it’s their own world, the world of their daily life, and it’s our loss that so many of us grow out of it.