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“He was indeed the epitome of contemporary scientists who, like Mathieu and Einstein himself, as soon as they had achieved some decisive scientific triumph, would start immediately to sign every possible protest against its consequences, running in circles and tearing their hair, whining that theirs was “labor of love,” a pure, disinterested pursuit and that, in Kaiser Wilhelm’s words after he saw the carnage of the First World War, which he had started, “ich habe das nicht gewollt,” that “this is not what I wanted.” Mathieu hated them almost as much as he hated himself. He was one of them, a full ranking member of the club, and this awareness was eating him alive. His only trace of dignity lay in the fact that he was not lying to himself about it. He knew that research, scientific pursuit was a compulsion, and inner must, and an addiction and that the attitude that consists in passing the buck to society as far as the practical consequences of ”pure,” “disinterested,” scientific accomplishment were concerned was mere whitewash, alibi and a refusal to acknowledge both responsibility and self indulgence.”

HumanityHuman NatureScientistsSelf IndulgenceIrresponsibilityThe GaspSciencPure ScienceScientific PursuitsTrue Science
Author:Romain Gary
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“Mathieu didn’t know at all what to do about May. He felt a kind of nausea, probably induced by the regular movement of the ball. She was having religious fits again. Jesus Christ, she thought, how many thousands of years will it take people to get over their folklore? There was nothing he could do about that now. She wouldn’t listen to all the scientific explanations and would go on imagining things. People will always keep imagining things. It was impossible to convince them that there is nothing there. Nothing at all. Only matter. Particles. Energy.”

ReligionHuman NatureThere Is No GodReligion Vs ScienceThe GaspFolklore And MythologyReligious Fits
Book:The Gasp
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“Mon général,” Mathieu said quietly, “ever since Greek mythology, Prometheus, Sisyphus, and then Faust, and all the rest— not forgetting, of course, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and other fables— everything, including Oedipus and atom, everything, has always begun as a poetic license, as a . . . metaphor and then invariably it became a hard, down-to-earth reality. The whole purpose of science, indeed, seems to be a validation of metaphors. Sodom and Gomorrah, materialistic West and materialistic East, all the parables and fables . . . as if all the metaphors were pointing to some historical and scientific truth. Mankind told itself everything about itself almost from the start, but it never believed it. If it comes to perish one day, it will be through sheer disbelief . . .”

MankindTruth Of LifeSelf DestructionMetaphorsThe GaspPurpose Of ScienceScientific TruthsDestruction Of Mankind
Book:The Gasp
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“He was to tell André Malraux later: “Clemeneau used to say: ‘War is a much too serious business to be left to the military.’ And look what happened to Communism when the Communists got hold of it or to the Catholic Church in the hands of the clergy. We are rapidly approaching a point when it will no longer be possible to trust scientists with science.”

ScienceChurchCommunismIronyClergyScientistsThe GaspCommunistsCannot Be Trusted
Book:The Gasp
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“She was standing at the door, and the sheer visual delight, the sharp ache of happiness, something like the sight of fleeing moments of beauty that are so much a part of the life’s vanishing act, with its total absence of forever, filled him as usual with that greed, that tyrannical urge to seize, to keep and preserve and never lose again, which is perhaps how twenty thousand years ago the first image of an antelope came to be painted by an artist upon a rock. Then she put her blouse on and Time, the old robber baron, went by, carrying his loots away.”

TimePreservationTime FliesThe GaspVanishing LifeGreed For LifeGreedy ToMoments Of BeautyVanishing Act
Book:The Gasp
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