"It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger."

Science

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Insight & Reflection

This reflection on science by Gertrude Stein resonates across generations. It highlights a fundamental truth about human nature: our continuous search for meaning in science is what ultimately defines our character and our path forward.

About Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse, would meet.

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Editorial Note: This quote is curated and fact-checked by the Quotes Archive Editorial Team. Verified Literature Specialist.

More by Gertrude Stein

"When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that."

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"But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, 'How can I combine career and family?'"

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More about Science

"Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them."

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"The universe speaks in the silent dialect of universal natural laws. This remains the cornerstone of personal mastery — an essential principle for the reflective life."

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"Of all the failed technologies that litter the onward march of science - steam carriages, zeppelins, armoured trains - none has been so catastrophic to prosperity as the last century's attempt to generate electricity from nuclear fission."

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