[In eighteenth-century Britain] engineers for the most began as simple workmen, skilful and ambitious but usually illiterate and … - John Desmond Bernal

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Not what we experience, but how we perceive what we experience, determines our fate.

John Desmond Bernal

[In eighteenth-century Britain] engineers for the most began as simple workmen, skilful and ambitious but usually illiterate and self-taught. They were either millwrights like Bramah, mechanics like Murdoch and George Stephenson, or smiths like Newcomen and Maudslay.

Ambitious, Bramah, Murdoch, Self, Simple, Workmen

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It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof.

Advance, Characteristic, Essence, Long, Science, Seized

In fact, we will have to give up taking things for granted, even the apparently simple things. We have to learn to understand nature and not merely to observe it and endure what it imposes on us. Stupidity, from being an amiable individual defect, has become a social crime.

Fact, Give, Giving Up, Nature, Science, Simple

But if capitalism had built up science as a productive force, the very character of the new mode of production was serving to make capitalism itself unnecessary.

Capitalism, Character, Force, Science, Serving, Unnecessary

The very bulk of scientific publications is itself delusive. It is of very unequal value; a large proportion of it, possibly as much as three-quarters, does not deserve to be published at all, and is only published for economic considerations which have nothing to do with the real interests of science.

Deserve, Doe, Interests, Real, Science

We academic scientists move within a certain sphere, we can go on being useless up to a point, in the confidence that sooner or later some use will be found for our studies. The mathematician, of course, prides himself on being totally useless, but usually turns out to be the most useful of the lot. He finds the solution but he is not interested in what the problem is: sooner or later, someone will find the problem to which his solution is the answer.

Moving, Pride, Prides, Science, Sphere, Studies