Sleepwalker Quotes (2 quotes)
The clouds roll on.
Silent as sleepwalkers the clouds
keep coming from infinity
bank behind bank
and line after line,
and change colors on the earth.
Silent as sleepwalkers the clouds
keep coming from infinity
bank behind bank
and line after line,
and change colors on the earth.
As translated in Rolf Jacobsen and Roger Greenwald (ed., trans.), 'The Clouds', North in the World: Selected Poems of Rolf Jacobsen, A Bilingual Edition (1985, 2002), 9, from 'Earth and Iron' (1933). Collected in the original Norwegian edition (1999).
The progress of Science is generally regarded as a kind of clean, rational advance along a straight ascending line; in fact it has followed a zig-zag course, at times almost more bewildering than the evolution of political thought. The history of cosmic theories, in particular, may without exaggeration be called a history of collective obsessions and controlled schizophrenias; and the manner in which some of the most important individual discoveries were arrived at reminds one more of a sleepwalker’s performance than an electronic brain’s.
From 'Preface', in The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe (1959), 15.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
