Science famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us.
-- A. A. Gill -
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
-- A. A. Milne -
I first read science fiction in the old British Chum annual when I was about 12 years old.
-- A. E. van Vogt -
If nobody said anything unless he knew what he was talking about, a ghastly hush would descend upon the earth.
-- A. P. Herbert -
I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton's head.
-- A.C. Grayling -
Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.
-- A.C. Grayling -
I value science--none can prize it more, It gives ten thousand motives to adore: Be it religious, as it ought to be, The heart it humbles, and it bows the knee.
-- Abraham Coles -
We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent or self-satisfied; they are, if sound, the spearhead of progress. If they are fundamentally wrong, free discussion will in time put an end to them.
-- Abraham Flexner -
[George] Uhlenbeck was a highly gifted physicist. One of his remarkable traits was he would read every issue of T%he Physical Review from cover to cover.
-- Abraham Pais -
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
-- Adam Smith -
But it would be absolutely mistaken to regard a wealth of theoretical knowledge as characteristic proof for the qualities and abilities of a leader.
-- Adolf Hitler -
A people of scholars, if they are physically degenerate, weak-willed and cowardly pacifists, will not storm the heavens, indeed, they will not be able to safeguard their existence on this earth.
-- Adolf Hitler -
Knowledge above the average can be crammed into the average man, but it remains dead, and in the last analysis sterile knowledge. The result is a man who may be a living dictionary but nevertheless falls down miserably in all special situations and decisive moments in life.
-- Adolf Hitler -
The youthful brain should in general not be burdened with things ninety-five percent of which it cannot use and hence forgets again... In many cases, the material to be learned in the various subjects is so swollen that only a fraction of it remains in the head of the individual pupil, and only a fraction of this abundance can find application, while on the other hand it is not adequate for the man working and earning his living in a definite field.
-- Adolf Hitler -
Our national policies will not be revoked or modified, even for scientists. If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years.
-- Adolf Hitler -
Whether statistics be an art or a science... or a scientific art, we concern ourselves little. It is the basis of social and political dynamics, and affords the only secure ground on which the truth or falsehood of the theories and hypotheses of that complicated science can be brought to the test.
-- Adolphe Quetelet -
There are more microbes per person than the entire population of the world. Imagine that. Per person. This means that if the time scale is diminished in proportion to that of space it would be quite possible for the whole story of Greece and Rome to be played out between farts.
-- Alan Bennett -
Where lies the line between sorcery and science? It is only a matter of terminology, my friend.
-- Alan Dean Foster -
The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure.
-- Alan Kay -
Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor).
-- Alan Sokal -
Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.
-- Alan Turing -
Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it.
-- Alan Valentine -
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
-- Albert Einstein -
Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
-- Albert Einstein -
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
-- Albert Einstein -
Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting points and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.
-- Albert Einstein -
The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it Intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why.
-- Albert Einstein -
Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.
-- Albert Einstein -
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
-- Albert Einstein -
I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know God's thoughts, the rest are details.
-- Albert Einstein -
The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
-- Albert Einstein -
I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple
-- Albert Einstein -
It is the theory which decides what we can observe
-- Albert Einstein -
Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and for the community.
-- Albert Einstein -
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
-- Albert Einstein -
I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research.
-- Albert Einstein -
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
-- Albert Einstein -
It is harder to crack prejudice than an atom.
-- Albert Einstein -
A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.
-- Albert Einstein -
But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
-- Albert Einstein -
Anyone who thinks science is trying to make human life easier or more pleasant is utterly mistaken.
-- Albert Einstein -
We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
-- Albert Einstein -
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
-- Albert Einstein -
If I could remember the names of all these particles, I'd be a botanist.
-- Albert Einstein -
Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world. All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it.
-- Albert Einstein -
I have yet to meet a single person from our culture, no matter what his or her educational background, IQ, and specific training, who had powerful transpersonal experiences and continues to subscribe to the materialistic monism of Western science.
-- Albert Einstein -
Do you remember how electrical currents and 'unseen waves' were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy.
-- Albert Einstein -
As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.
-- Albert Schweitzer -
Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi -
Science has helped us to understand and master ourselves, creating an elevated new form of human life, the wealth and beauty of which cannot be pictured today by the keenest imagination.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi -
Research is four things: brains with which to think, eyes with which to see, machines with which to measure and, fourth, money.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi -
If any student comes to me and says he wants to be useful to mankind and go into research to alleviate human suffering, I advise him to go into charity instead. Research wants real egotists who seek their own pleasure and satisfaction, but find it in solving the puzzles of nature.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi -
Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Facts are ventriloquist’s dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.
-- Aleister Crowley -
Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Science, which cuts its way through the muddy pond of daily life without mingling with it, casts its wealth to right and left, but the puny boatmen do not know how to fish for it.
-- Alexander Herzen -
Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skillful hands; in unskillful, the most mischievous.
-- Alexander Pope -
First follow Nature, and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same: Unerring nature, still divinely bright, One clear, unchanged, and universal light, Life, force, and beauty must to all impart, At once the source, and end, and test of art.
-- Alexander Pope -
Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide, First strip off all her equipage of Pride, Deduct what is but Vanity or Dress, Or Learning's Luxury or idleness, Or tricks, to show the stretch of the human brain Mere curious pleasure or ingenious pain.
-- Alexander Pope -
To teach vain Wits that Science little known, T' admire Superior Sense, and doubt their own!
-- Alexander Pope -
New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise: So pleas'd at first, the towring Alps we try,...
-- Alexander Pope -
Index-learning turns no student pale, Yet holds the eel of Science by the tail. Index-learning is a term used to mock pretenders who acquire superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes.
-- Alexander Pope -
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!
-- Alexander Pope -
A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.
-- Alexander Smith -
The best way of increasing the [average] intelligence of scientists would be to reduce their number.
-- Alexis Carrel -
It seems that the increased number of scientific workers, their being split up into groups whose studies are limited to a small subject, and over-specialization have brought about a shrinking of intelligence. There is no doubt that the quality of any human group decreases when the number of the individuals composing this group increases beyond certain limits... The best way to increase the intelligence of scientists would be to decrease their number.
-- Alexis Carrel -
Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe. Remarking on the complexity of Ptolemaic model of the universe after it was explained to him. Footnote: Carlyle says, in his History of Frederick the Great, book ii. chap. vii. that this saying of Alphonso about Ptolemy's astronomy, 'that it seemed a crank machine; that it was pity the Creator had not taken advice,' is still remembered by mankind, - this and no other of his many sayings.
-- Alfonso X of Castile -
As an adult after college and as an artist I thought about what was real, what sustained me - it was Christian Science. I was using that when I didn't know it. Saying yes to the Light and your better instinct.
-- Alfre Woodard -
Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.
-- Alfred Korzybski -
If a psychiatric and scientific inquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.
-- Alfred Korzybski -
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson -
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its truth or explain its meaning.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
In the old days, they killed the messenger who brought the bad news... a Cassandra is never popular in her time.
-- Alice Stewart -
Anyone who has lived through an English winter can see the point of building Stonehenge to make the Sun come back.
-- Alison Jolly -
Our heads are round so thought can change direction
-- Allen Ginsberg -
The spirit of science is not to prejudge, but to give any honest query a fair shake.
-- Allen Wheelis -
The next major explosion is going to be when genetics and computers come together. I'm talking about an organic computer - about biological substances that can function like a semiconductor.
-- Alvin Toffler -
Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion - thus: Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man. Minor Premise: One man can dig a post-hole in sixty seconds; Therefore- Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second. This may be called syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
GRAVITATION, n. The tendency of all bodies to approach one another with a strength proportioned to the quantity of matter they contain-the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength of their tendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B, makes B the proof of A.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
BODY-SNATCHER, n. A robber of grave-worms. One who supplies the young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied the undertaker.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
DIAPHRAGM, n. A muscular partition separating disorders of the chest from disorders of the bowels.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
EAT, v.i. To perform successively (and successfully) the functions of mastication, humectation, and deglutition.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
APOTHECARY, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and grave worm's provider
-- Ambrose Bierce -
GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese indeed.
-- Ambrose Bierce
