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Tom Stoppard
(3 Jul 1937 - )
British playwright and screenwriter whose plays include Arcadia and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.
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Science Quotes by Tom Stoppard (4 quotes)
Bernard: Oh, youre going to zap me with penicillin and pesticides. Spare me that and Ill spare you the bomb and aerosols. But dont confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. Theres no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotles cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to Gods crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I cant think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasarsbig bangs, black holeswho [cares]? How did you people con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves?
Chloe: Are you against penicillin, Bernard?
Bernard: Dont feed the animals.
Chloe: Are you against penicillin, Bernard?
Bernard: Dont feed the animals.
— Tom Stoppard
In the play, Acadia (1993), Act 2, Scene 5, 61.
Thomasina: Every week I plot your equations dot for dot, xs against ys in all manner of algebraical relation, and every week they draw themselves as commonplace geometry, as if the world of forms were nothing but arcs and angles. Gods truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers?
Septimus: We do.
Thomasina: Then why do your shapes describe only the shapes of manufacture?
Septimus: I do not know.
Thomasina: Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet.
Septimus: We do.
Thomasina: Then why do your shapes describe only the shapes of manufacture?
Septimus: I do not know.
Thomasina: Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet.
— Tom Stoppard
In the play, Acadia (1993), Scene 3, 37.
Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?
— Tom Stoppard
Spoken by Rosencrantz in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1967), Act 2, 51
If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.
— Tom Stoppard
Spoken by Thomasina in Arcadia (1993), Act I, Scene 1, 13.
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) -- 
