Richard Feynman (1918–1988):
People — I mean the average person, the great majority of people, the enormous majority of people — are woefully, pitifully, absolutely ignorant of the science of the world that they live in, and they can stay that way. I don't mean to say the heck with them, what I mean is that they are able to stay that way without it worrying them at all — only mildly — so from time to time when they see [the principle of conservation of subatomic charge and parity] mentioned in the newspaper they ask what it is. And an interesting question of the relation of science to modern society is just that — why is it possible for people to stay so woefully ignorant and yet reasonably happy in modern society when so much knowledge is unavailable to them? (p. 102)
If we look away from the science and look at the world around us, we find out something rather pitiful: that the environment that we live in is so actively, intensely unscientific. (p. 106)
From "What Is and What Should Be the Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society" (talk delivered at the "Galileo Symposium, 1964"); reprinted in Jeffrey Robbins ed., The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The best short works of Richard P. Feynman, (New York: Basic Books: 1999), pp. 97–115. The original venue appears to be: "Symposium Internazionale di Storia, Metodologia, Logica e Filosofia della Scienza 'Galileo nella Storia e nella Filosofia della Scienze': manifestazioni celebrative del IV centenario della nascita di Galileo (Firenze - Pisa 14 - 16 Settembre 1964)" — at least, there is a collection of conference proceedings ("acts") bearing that title.