C. P. Snow

Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow of Leicester CBE (5 October 1905 – 1 July 1980) was an English novelist, scientific administrator, civil servant, and literary critic.

Quotes

• The official world, the corridors of power.
  • Homecomings (1956), ch. 22

• When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find that far more, and far more hideous, crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
  • Public Affairs (London: Macmillan, 1971) p. 195

• There are no secrets in science.
  • The Physicists (1981), published posthumously.

The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959)

The Rede Lecture for 1959. Quotations are cited from the 1960 Cambridge University Press edition.

• I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups ... Literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.
  • p. 3

• Two polar groups: at one pole we have the literary intellectuals, at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.
  • p. 4

• I was searching for something a little more than a dashing metaphor, a good deal less than a cultural map: and for those purposes the two cultures is about right.
  • p. 10

• A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
  • pp. 15-16

• There is, of course, no complete solution. […] But we can do something. The chief means open to us is education […] There is no excuse for letting another generation be as vastly ignorant, or as devoid of understanding and sympathy, as we are ourselves.
  • p. 61

About C. P. Snow

• Try as I might, I could never feel any great affection for a man who so much resembled a Baked Alaska – sweet, warm and gungy on the outside, hard and cold within.
  • Francis King Yesterday Came Suddenly (London: Constable, 1993) p. 83.