Quotes by James Burke

Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.

On why 300 years separates the first use of glass lenses in spectacles and their use in a telescope: “In many cases there are times when an invention is technologically possible – and in which it may indeed appear necessary, as the telescope may have – but without a market the idea will not sell, and in the absence of the technical and social infrastructure to support it, the invention will not survive.

Scientists are the true driving force of civilization.